...But We Lived Through the Flames
The World of Double Victory before the Departure (Part TWO)
This is Part TWO of an explainer series elaborating on the world of DOUBLE VICTORY before the Composite Testing Force is sent back in time to 1942; read Part ONE here.
Fifth Persian Gulf War of 2034
The Nuclear War / Arabian Awakening / Second Gulf Coast-Iranian War / Seventy-Eight Day War
In the years since the Fourth Gulf War, the GCC states have become the primary energy suppliers for the PRC as Bretton Woods, NATO, and OSATO member states have decreased their reliance on hydrocarbons for energy production. During this time, the Gulf States have become even more authoritarian. They have forestalled international stigmatization by lavishly funding simultaneous propaganda campaigns using western non-profit and hyper-macho jargon.
This authoritarian pivot includes reinvigorating the kafala system of domestic slavery by building a network of what amount to export gulags. The premise of the system is simple: Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States import dissidents from the People’s Republic of China and the Post-Putin Russian Federation (still recovering from its defeat in Ukraine almost a decade earlier) to be used as slave labor in homes, the service sector, and light or dangerous industry. The export gulags are complemented by closed cities for kafala slaves from various South Asian and East African countries, especially those burdened by predatory loan traps run by Chinese banks (particularly state banks).
Iran, on the other hand, remains in flux. It has partially democratized in the wake of 2026. The nation is on a tightrope walk from a hybrid regime to a full democracy. It has a civilian-controlled armed forces/security apparatus operating at complete odds with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. In fact, the Iranian Civil Government (ICG) and IRGC support separate, warring proxy groups in Iraq, Lebanon, and Israel-aligned Assadist Syria.
Critically, both states have procured nuclear weapons. Iran came first in 2028. The failure to rejoin or restart the JPOA and the war in 2026 motivated Iran to secure a means of deterrence and a method of last resort to protect the integrity of the regime. This effort was spearheaded by the reformist clique in a bid to undercut the standing of the IRGC and the hardliners. It was all but openly aided by the Russian Federation as recompense for Iranian support during the Russo-Ukraine War of 2022-2025 (and as a thumb in the eye to NATO.) In response to the Iranian bomb, against American wishes, the Saudi government procured weapons and scientists from Pakistan. They tested their first bomb 16 months after the Iranian test in early 2028 (clear evidence that the KSA had begun their program well before they publicly stated they had).
The Fifth Gulf War begins on the 17th of May, 2034, with a media and internet blackout across the KSA. Within few hours later, social media posts of drone footage show Saudi National Guardsmen and the General Directorate of Public Safety paramilitaries firing on kafala slaves protesting at Al Murabba Square in Riyadh. Word spreads, and within forty-eight hours, all the GCC states have imposed martial law and are actively fighting upwards of two dozen armed groups formed by risen slaves. The violence of the Post-Gulf IV kafala system no longer deters the peninsula’s slave population. It only begets more uprisings. The 17th of May will be known as the Awakening. It becomes the largest slave revolt since the Haitian Revolution.
Within five days of the first uprising, the entire Middle East is on fire. The Gulf States formally claim (and earnestly believe) that the Awakening is the work of the IRGC (it is not). Accordingly, the GCC prepares for war with Iran. At the same time, the Gulf States activate their proxy groups in the Levant. The ICG and IRGC retaliate in kind with their networks of proxies. The opening phase of the war hits its peak when the Royal Saudi Strategic Missile Force launches seven Chinese-made Dong Neng-3D anti-ballistic missiles against Iran’s humble communications and intelligence satellite constellation. The resulting debris field causes a partial Kessler Syndrome and nearly $350B worth of damage in mere hours.
The damage the Saudis caused to global communications undermines much of their clout in Washington—the Young Administration actually uses the chaos to scupper their failing Social Security privatization. The Administration pivots to a limited intervention as Iraq invokes its 2028 Mutual Defense Treaty with the United States, deploying the 82nd Airborne Division, the 108th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, and II Marine Expeditionary Force to the nation. The United States will defend Iraq from the warring parties (DESERT SENTINEL) and protect international trade in the region (EARNEST WILL III). These operations are drafted to avoid the United States and Iraq from being drawn into either side of the conflict, on the orders of the White House. The Young Administration has no interest in joining the Saudis—it would be political suicide—but has no intention of striking deep into the Gulf States until pushed. The White House, however, is much more willing to confront the Iranian Governments directly.
Skirmishes between the Gulf States and Iranian Governments become an escalatory spiral. Neither side feels able to back down despite both believing war is a very bad idea. This leads to a ?-way war between the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Iranian Civil Government, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the US and Iraq, dozens of proxy groups across the Levant, and a constellation of Awakened factions.
Visual confirmation of atrocities (the mass execution of non-combatants in Dubai, Doha, and Riyadh) and a missile attack on the cruise ship Wonder of the Seas (transiting the Gulf of Aden to the Maldives) forces the Young Administration to act. On the 3rd of July, 2034, CENTCOM launches Operation DESERT TYPHOON, the clearing of the Persian Gulf. Two surface action groups are deployed, one centered on the USS Lyndon B. Johnson (CG-1002) and the other on the recently commissioned USS Long Beach (CSGN-42). USS Long Beach definitively proves the value of electrothermal chemical gun technology and Fleet Architecture 2040 by almost singlehandedly clearing the Gulf. The two SAGs destroy the vast majority of naval forces on both sides of the Gulf, and also temporarily disrupt air and anti-tanker operations for almost two weeks.
“Well, the Old Lady sure didn’t lie.”
— Captain Jonathan Pinard’s (Commanding Officer, LYNDON B. JOHNSON (CG-1002)) laconic summary of LONG BEACH’s debut, referencing Captain Scott’s first public Congressional hearing as Director of the Office of Critical Procurement where she described the LONG BEACH program as “eight-hundred-and-fifty-three feet of fuck off and fuck you.”
The limited but decisive US intervention provokes military escalation on either side of the Gulf. This culminates in both Iran and the Gulf Coast States launching nearly simultaneous invasions into Iraq, near Basra. After the Gulf States gamble with their best forces and their last reserves, the Awakened groups renew their attacks on urban centers and begin to gain territory.
On the evening of the 25th of July, 2034, Awakened fighters close in on a once-secret Royal Saudi Strategic Missile Force bunker in Riyadh, the final redoubt of the man who will be the Last King of Saudi Arabia.
Mohammed bin Salman is consumed by fear and rage at the collapse of his country and more than two decades of his work. He has been physically isolated for days. A cornucopia of amphetamines and opioids races through his veins, having mostly subsisted on a cocktail of narcotics. His allies in Moscow and Beijing have done little to assist him; the wholesale slaughter of revolting slaves is too much to stomach, even for the leading global authoritarian powers. His military is on the brink of collapse. The best of the United Forces of the Gulf and much of the IRGC Ground Forces have been annihilated by the US and Iraqi militaries at the Battle of the Shatt al-Arab.
The two invasions of Iraq are too much for the Young Administration. The Saudi’s rapidly disappearing sources in Washington warn of an imminent counter-air and SEAD campaign to enforce a no-fly zone against both belligerents. The Russians and Chinese have already signaled they will not block a UN mandate. As Awakened fighters storm the barricades surrounding the Ministry of Defense Complex above the bunker, Mohammed bin Salman makes his decision.
The 26th of July 2034 will be the deadliest day in human history.
At 12:56 AM, the King orders a nuclear strike plan into action, an altered version of the Saudi Integrated Operational Plan, known as Operation MALHAMA AL-KUBRA.
The plan is an act of national suicide—targeting rebel population centers followed by strikes against Iran and American forces in Iraq and the Arabian Sea. It calls for the use of the entire Saudi ready-use nuclear arsenal, roughly 150 weapons.
With no hope of escape or rescue, MBS chooses fire. He burns a scar across the face of history and is apocryphally quoted saying, “I shall give them their freedom, but only in death. Kill them all.”
American ELINT detects the SIOP’s transmission, and after a short delay, President Young is consulting with STRATCOM, the Joint Chiefs, and Secretary of Defense Liz Cheney about a nuclear counterforce strike to pre-empt a potential nuclear launch order. However, the US is uncertain about the actual contents of the transmission, only that it was very likely to be a nuclear order of some kind. The President asks for a conventional option. However, STRATCOM’s standing Major Attack Options are exclusively nuclear—and most include striking Iran and Saudi Arabia simultaneously. The President orders a conventional counter-force against the Gulf State be put into action, immediately.
Thirty minutes later, an RSAF J-20D drops the first nuclear weapon since 1945 on a suburb of Riyadh. The 1.2-megaton weapon is a modified version of the American B83 nuclear bomb, whose design was stolen from the US. The RSAF begins a campaign of nuclear strikes against the strongholds of the Awakening with a mix of strategic and non-strategic nuclear weapons delivered by air. The majority of the Saudis’ fixed-wing nuclear force is airborne by the time the first bomb is dropped.
Operation TREBUCHET, the American counter-force mission, begins twenty-two minutes later with a salvo of fifty-seven LGM-201 Long Range Hypersonic Weapons from Dark Eagle launchers, USS Lyndon B. Johnson, and several nuclear submarines. Upon detection of the American launch, the key turn order is automatically given for the entire Saudi nuclear and conventional missile inventory, as per the modified SIOP.
Hundreds of ballistic missiles scream into the early morning hours and are met by an unprecedented volume of interceptor fire. The US Army and Navy launch more anti-missile interceptors in the next three hours than in their preceding history combined.
Long Beach alone will fire one-hundred-and-nine SM-2, twenty-four SM-3, ninety-three SM-6—and a dozen SM-7 (the first use of hypersonic air-defense missiles in anger). Only stopping for one minute and seven seconds after a 25-kiloton tactical nuclear weapon burts two nautical miles off her port bow. The nuclear weapons that evade interception are primarily scorched earth strikes. Those that were literally impossible for American interceptors to reach. However, some with particularly shallow trajectories or those aimed at targets whose defensive batteries were overwhelmed are able to bypass American IAMD.
Hundreds of American aircraft scream into Saudi airspace. A huge air battle rages over the entire country as desperate American pilots attempt to kill strike fighters, air-launched cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles in their boost phase. The F-15 will lose its unblemished air-to-air victory record that night as death screams across the sands. America launches the largest missile barrage in human history (only to be surpassed by Day Zero of Second Sino). TLAMs, PrSMs, and Crossbolt OpFires are launched by the score. The main targets of TREBUCHET are the Royal Strategic Missiles Force’s six hardened missile fields and two battalions of mobile MBRM launchers. At this point President Young rules out any nuclear counterforce option.
Forty-three Saudi nuclear weapons—a mix of ~200 kilotons strategic and <50 non-strategic devices—detonate within six hours. The US and Iran intercept an additional eighty-six delivery vehicles—both missiles and jets—interspersed amongst scores of conventional ballistic missiles and nearly every functional GCC aircraft remaining.
Six weapons hit American-Iraqi targets—Al Assad Air Base, Balad Air Base, Camp Victory II, FOB Weathers in Iraq itself, FOB Emancipation in Dubai, and the Long Beach SAG in the Gulf. Six weapons hit targets in Iran—Mehrabad International Airport, two ICG military sites, and three IRGC military sites. The remaining thirty-one weapons are used against Saudi and Gulf Stater cities. Iran responds with a two-for-one retaliatory strike at the GCC, a total of twelve nuclear-tipped ballistic and cruise missiles. The US intercepts ten.
In all, Saudi Arabia and Iran exchange slightly more than seven megatons of hellfire.
the United States and the People’s Republic of China announce a joint intervention just forty-seven minutes after the first detonation. However, it is truly little more than an announcement. The Chinese have relatively scant assets in the region, mostly a carrier group in the Indian Ocean and their forces in Djibouti. The memorandum is the product of circumstance. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and US Secretary of State Steve Mnuchin happen to be meeting at an unannounced Ninth Anchorage Summit to discuss options to move the war to a peaceful conclusion when the first weapon detonates.
23.7 million people die in the six-hour exchange, with a further estimated seven and a half million deaths from radiation and deprivation over the next year and a hundred thousand combatant deaths before the exchange.
A week later, it is over.
The United States brings all its might to bear against the belligerents, assisted by the PLA. This marriage of horrified convenience overwhelms the remains of the United Forces of the Gulf and aids the Iranian Civil Government in neutralizing the IRGC. The region is devastated. The world stands speechless.
The war lasts only seventy-eight days.
The Ninth Anchorage Summit ends with a framework for comprehensive nuclear arms control and reduction. A global summit assembles in Geneva to provide a comprehensive plan to respond to the ecological and agricultural costs of the nuclear exchange and to provide further resources to the newly-established UN Transitional Authority for the Arabian Peninsula (UNTAAP). After a last-minute meeting between the ‘eldest’ nuclear powers, the Comprehensive Reduction Treaty (commonly known as the Global Zero Treaty) is introduced and backed by the United States, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, France, and the People’s Republic of China. Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea join after varying means of persuasion and coercion.
The treaty slashes the global nuclear stockpile by 60%, creates hotlines between the nuclear powers, forms the International Threat Management and Reduction Agency, and establishes hard qualitative and quantitative caps on the nuclear arsenals of the treaty powers—which will include every nuclear state. The treaty comes into force on January 1st, 2036, at a ceremony in Hiroshima.
The war’s external economic aftershocks cause a sharp and sudden recession globally, with the worst impact in China—where gas prices soar and the power grid rolling blackouts. Gulf oil is rapidly replaced with Russian oil, continuing the thaw between the slowly recovering Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China.
The Comprehensive Reduction Treaty and the decision not to strike the Gulf States and Iran with a nuclear counterforce strike ignite a new civil war in the Republican Party. President Young was already gearing up for an uphill climb to keep his party’s nomination and is thrown into the fight for his political life. The Administration attempts a daring gamble—they push for a revised Social Security privatization bill and a massive fiscal stimulus package simultaneously.
The Republican-controlled House votes down the stimulus bill, despite Democratic support—though a second, smaller bill will be passed. The Social Security bill is killed in a dramatic 2:00 AM session by Senator Jenniffer González-Colón of Puerto Rico. Young will barely win renomination after a bruising primary—just narrowly avoiding a contested convention. Come Election Day 2036, President Young and Vice President Britt are unhorsed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her running mate, Senator Gretchen Whitmer.
Second Sino-American War of 2037
The Great Pacific War or World War III
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the second sitting member of the United States House of Representatives to be elected to the Presidency, after James Garfield in 1880. Her salience reached an all-time high during the Post-Seventy-Eight Day War economic crisis package fight in the hot. As House Minority Whip (under Minority Leader Joe Neguse) she was the face of Democratic Party opposition to what is termed the “Republican Bad Deal.”
A Just Society starts at home.
— The first sentence of the 2036 Democratic Party platform.
Her presidential campaign was predicated on improving the material conditions of American workers and families, redoubling investment in education, improving healthcare outcomes in AmeriCare and the American Health System, building more housing, and passing a sectoral unionization bill. When the topic of foreign policy was broached, the campaign criticized the People’s Republic of China and the other authoritarian states and emphasized the need to avoid future conflicts. Notably, her campaign did include very specific mentions to countering the malign influence of Chinese debt-imperialism in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Regardless, the focus of the campaign was fundamentally a comprehensive domestic program.
However, this was not how AOC was understood in Beijing or by their (remarkably incompetent) industry of “White Houseologists” (Chi-Com Kremlinology is reserved for the CCP’s new generation of neoliberal, brain-dead nepo-princelings). President Xi Jinping—now 83 years old—is nearly blind, having lost most of his vision despite the best medical care available. Xi is personally convinced, as is his innermost circle, that the new president is a fervent Trotskyite hawk intent on destroying China and the Chinese Nation. The Politburo believe the references to eliminating the burden of Chinese state debt in their neo-colonies is the first step in a conspiracy to bring back the Century of Humiliation before the Revolution’s centennial in 2049.
This includes semi-official conspiracy theories, such as: AOC has secretly pardoned (as a member of the House) the imprisoned Sacklers and is using them to create a massive secret stockpile of oxycodone to be unleashed after a new opium war (a conspiracy heard by one of Xi’s nephews, a WH-ologist, on a podcast hosted by an OAN anchor’s Maoist white nationalist cat-girl ex-wife).
Needless to say, the times have not turned AOC into a shadow hawk. On a personal level, and by the planks of the Democratic Platform (and her primary campaign), AOC’s views on foreign and defense policy reflect the median of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party: support for America’s bi- and multi-lateral commitments, including support for NATO, OSATO, and Taiwanese sovereignty, with an emphasis on diplomatic effort, and a skepticism toward the use of force. In a macro-sense, her foreign policy represents a return to New Dealer skepticism of foreign empires and colonialist nations and is informed by having witnessed the rise and fall of three separate presidencies on the altar of foreign and defense policy.
She intends to be a domestic policy president; events will not permit that.
In March of 2037, just weeks after her inauguration and with her outer cabinet freshly confirmed by block vote, the spiral to the Second Sino War starts. The newly elected President of the Republic of China, Enoch Wu (who narrowly lost his 2020 legislative race but decisively won the 2023 Taipei by-election), embarks on a bold forward step for the nation—an official state visit to Japan. Much of the cabinet—including Vice President Huang Jie and Vice Premier Lai Pin-yu—join the visit for a formal intergovernmental summit between Japan and Taiwan. Premier Chen Chi-mai and Minister of National Defense Wang Ting-yu remain in Taipei.
The state visit and accompanying inter-governmental conference on economic and security affairs are a smashing success. However, toward the end of the conference, Premier Chen suffers a fatal heart attack in his sleep. The ceremonies are wrapped a few days earlier than expected, just before the beginning of the expected biennial military exercises on either side of the First Island Chain. On one side is the PLA’s Exercise 011049 (trial run for the invasion of Taiwan); on the other, its OSATO counter-invasion plan, REFORT 37 (Readiness of Forces around Taiwan) named “TIGER SHIELD.”
The Taiwanese delegation flies back to Taipei aboard the country’s new official air transport, a Boeing 777—still designated Air Force 3701. Southwest of Okinawa, the aircraft rapidly descends before disappearing off the radar altogether. American and Japanese military assets are scrambled shortly, but find nothing. The loss of Air Force 3701 on March 18, 2037 sparks a crisis unlike anything since July 1914.
When amateur aircraft trackers watch the rapid descent of 3701, speculation begins almost immediately that a surface-to-air missile from the PLA-occupied Senkaku or Sakishima Islands shot down the flight. The OSATO states are reasonably confident that the PLA didn’t shoot down the plane since they detected no missile launches or launcher movement. The senior leadership of the People’s Republic is also fairly sure that no one ordered a shootdown, at least; if it had been an overzealous officer, they also would have learned about it by then. The Politburo fears—due to a mix of their WH-ologists’ shoddy analysis and mass outrage stirred up by ultra-nationalist Weibo bloggers—that social media posts claiming a PLA-ordered shootdown are part of a sophisticated American information operation to justify a first strike, confirming their belief that AOC is more hawkish than Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld.
This however—are dire in Taiwan. A moment of national tragedy becomes a political and constitutional crisis. There is a “cliffhanger” in the Constitution of the Republic of China—it does not stipulate who becomes Acting President in the offices of the President, Vice President, Premier, and Vice Premier all become vacant. The Minister of National Defense—Wang Ting-yu—declares himself Acting President as the most senior surviving member of the Executive Yuan. At the same time (the addresses are simul-cast worldwide), the President of the Legislative Yuan, Lin Chia-lung, declares that he is the Acting President. The two are bitter rivals after Lin (as Premier under President William Lai) screwed Wang out of an appointment to Minister of National Defense. Neither have a majority in the Legislative Yuan to confirm their claim.
The constitutional fight drags on as both sides continue exercising.
The PLA increase their readiness across the board, and the Pacific allies respond in kind, starting by augmenting the last activities of REFORT. OSATO assigns more ships to Exercise LIBERTY BANDIT, a fleet movement in the Philippine Sea east of Okinawa. This ramp-up leads to increased attendance at the final event of REFORT, the Tokyo Security Conference. TSC is one-part after-action review, one-part meet-n-greet for OSATO partners, and one-part miniature Munich Security Conference. It is at this moment when the Corpo admiral (one of the favorite scions of the Fat Leonard Generation) serving as Commander of the Indo-Pacific Command makes a choice that is horrifically misread by the Politburo.
USN Admiral Jordan Westbrook-Carlton recommends that LIBERTY BANDIT (built around the carriers USS Ronald Reagan and JS Kaga) steer a course to the west and assist with the ongoing search for Air Force 3701. The maneuver is poorly signaled and comes as a shock to Beijing. It is their worst fear, confirmation of an American-Japanese first strike against the Sakishima Islands. This convinces the Politburo that the loss of Air Force 3701 was a false flag—and that the elevated military readiness across OSATO are preparations for a first strike, despite the fact that OSATO only increased readiness in response to the PLA.
The Central Military Commission dusts off its long-awaited plans for reunification with Taiwan but is keenly aware that its every move is scrutinized and could be used to justify what it believes is the imminent OSATO first strike. The Osaka Alliance becomes increasingly distressed as the bleating of a looming “Unprovoked Western Imperialist Attack” by Beijing reaches a fevered pitch. Traditionally, this kind of reverse saber rattling—wolf rattling—is used to cover windows of sharp internal deliberation in senior leadership; however, more reliable channels and sources begin to convey messages begging for a path to ‘honorable de-escalation,’ making it clear to DC and Osaka that the Chinese believe that a first strike is imminent.
The “Go” signal for the war is, textually, the opposite.
It is a stand-down order, announcing that the PLA will remain on high alert so long as OSATO “escalations” (exercises) continue. However, the order contains the sentence, “Stand-by for an immediate return to the general standing settlement.” The language is new, unlike the rest of the order which is boiler plate that has been recycled for over a decade.
OSATO’s massed intelligence power is certain that something is amiss but cannot parse the apparent invasion hysteria that has infected the PRC. Even post-war, it is unclear if the war hysteria resulted from a genuine reaction in the Politburo or an intentional information operation. A part of what would be commonly described by American officials after the event as a “drunken boxing first strike” (with the USIC ascribing these moves to a conscious plan) would be a daring plan for a false flag that would spiral into something much more.
The Taiwan Presidential Crisis presents a golden opportunity for the PRC, but their conduct is so psychotic, deranged, and discordant that it seems unlikely to OSATO analysts that this is The Moment. The chief of mission of the Guóānbù in Prague, a traditional post-First Sino intermediary, has to beg his opposite to do everything to prevent the AOC Administration from attacking. The psychosis spreads from the waist down, with mid-level managers countermanding each other—orders for war readiness and immediate de-escalation criss-cross desks across every Ministry and are plastered across every WeChat group.
Regardless, Osaka directs an increase in military readiness and vigilance. But days pass, and it appears to be yet another nothing-burger. The psychosis starts to fade. OSATO readies to stand down after SIGINT begins to pick through the chaff and finds evidence that this was an attempt by the CMC to gauge public reaction—a live trial run. This poor judgment comes as the PLAAF prepares a massive multi-bomber division training exercise, the last component of Exercise 011049.
The US Secretary of State, Chris Murphy, is a late arrival to the crisis, flying to Japan after a fateful midnight meeting in Beijing. Here is there to reassure America’s allies, to try to calm the situation if possible—and above all else—to make sure that OSATO does not shoot first. The former Connecticut Senator will have the third shortest tenure of any Secretary of State.
The Tokyo Security Conference is hosted at the Okura Tokyo, the famed luxury hotel in Minato, and begins on the last day of REFORT. The alliance’s forward forces are at the red line—soldiers awake for days and scheduled maintenance delayed despite continued use. The alliance has been at Combined Readiness Condition Two for twenty-four straight days—eleven days longer than the Cuba Missile Crisis and thirteen days longer than the Sakishima Missile Crisis.
As the day winds down, there is an evening talk with the Japanese Prime Minister, the Secretary-General of OSATO, the US Secretary of State, the Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and the Vietnamese Minister of Foreign Affairs. One floor above, there is an administrative meeting with the Commander of INDOPACOM, the ADF Chief of Defense Forces, the JSDF Chief of Staff of the Joint Staff, the PAVN Chief of the General Staff, the AFP Chief of Staff, and the Japanese Minister of Defense.
This last talk on mutual security is interrupted when a man in the third row stands up and shouts something in Japanese at 8:47 PM local time.
“YOU HAVE SLAIN THE LAMBS OF OUR LORD GOD! I CONDEMN YOU!”
Before anyone can react, he detonates 50 pounds of an Octaazacubane-Caesium-based novel composite explosive, killing everyone in the room and most people on the floor. The Okura Tokyo had been refitted with a carbon-neutral hydrogen fuel cell system, which ignites. All three of the hotel’s towers will collapse. One of them, the Legacy Tower, will fall onto the adjacent American Embassy and the Okura’s Heritage Wing. Both the Heritage Wing and Prestige Tower will catch fire and burn.
The blast kills everyone on the floor and also kills the US Ambassador to Japan, the Commandant of the US Marine Corps, the Chief of the Republican Australian Navy, the Chief of the Air and Space Staff of Japan, the Chief of the Maritime Staff of Japan, the Commander of US Forces Japan and the Fifth Air Force, the Commander of the US Army Pacific, and George, Prince of Wales (serving as flag aide to the First Sea Lord).
The attacker was a member of a radical sect of the Unification Church—but the attack on the Okura was not the one ordered by the CMC.
That operation fizzles. The Hello Kitty wrap Suzuki Every VBIED is intercepted and jammed by American and Japanese security forces before it can ram into the PRC Embassy gates and detonate its 1,500-pound explosive cargo amongst two dueling misinformation-instigated protests. The anti-American demonstrators protesting the imminent American first strike and ultra-nationalists protesting the ‘kidnapping’ of a Japanese woman by the Chinese Ambassador are dispersed with force. Like the Okura bomber, the driver is ID’d as a member of the “Proactive Self-Defense Wing of the Legitimate Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.”
The Moonies, increasingly marginalized from mainstream Japanese politics after the Assassination of Shinzo Abe in 2022, found support through a sock-puppet Chinese ex-pat billionaire (a cutout for the Guóānbù). This connection is used to build a jilted, radical, and pliable sect convinced that the Japanese Emperor ordered the killing of Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han to prevent the Rapture. The 20th Bureau—special direct action— agents had altered the plan without informing the Central Military Commission, Politburo, or core Guóānbù leadership. Beijing is entirely caught off guard by what they see unravel on television and social media.
The team from the Special Purposes Bureau, armed with forged press and diplomatic passes, accessed the Okura and planted the explosive vest, benefiting from lax security overwhelmed by an overbooked conference. Half of these agents were crushed by the hotel, having been unaware that the Hotel had received a top-of-a-line hydrogen fuel-cell power system two years prior. The Japanese domestic intelligence agency, the Public Security Intelligence Agency, will later claim that the detonation signal came from the Guóānbù team, and the two survivors would be immediately detained. But with Tokyo paralyzed, the information will not be widely known until the next day. It will not take long, however, to understand that the Okura Attack was conducted by the Chinese state.
The inferno kills and wounds nearly 1,500 and decapitates OSATO, INDOPACOM, JSDF, and the incumbent Japanese government. The bulk of the alliance’s senior staff are killed or wounded, however, the majority of the lower-level commands had yet to arrive to the conference. The word is passed from Osaka. HIEROPHANT. Condition One. However, that order comes too late, as most units had begun their maintenance cycles and much of their personnel dispersed for desperately needed R&R.
Sailors aboard USS Ronald Reagan watch the TV footage of the Okura Hotel coming down as the combined battle group’s commander, Rear Admiral Liam Broadhurst, sounds general quarters and orders the group to flank. The force prepares to initiate Operation POSEIDON FURY, the neutralization of the Sakishima Islands in the face of a massive PLA jamming effort. Before the formal orders are transmitted from the National Command Authority, Reagan’s orbiting E-2E Super Hawkeyes’ radar warning receivers light up, and hypersonic surface-to-air missiles pluck them out of the sky.
It is 10:12 PM.
The battlegroup escorts energize their radars and see the PLAAF bomber exercise, which had been returning based, has reversed course and is now bearing down on them. Moments later, the task force detects twenty-three CJ-200 Satyr sea-skimming high-hypersonic anti-ship cruise missiles out of an original salvo of thirty-two. The Screamers accelerate toward Mach 15 as they are detected. Their guidance computers time their sprints to avoid disintegrating before they reach their targets.
Nine missiles hit—two on Reagan, four on Kaga, one on the destroyer Atago, and two on the frigate Flinders. Kaga disappears under a mushroom cloud. Atago splits in half. Flinders disintegrates. Reagan maintains 27 knots. She continues to scramble her air wing, even with the forward catapults out. Of the twenty-six warships participating in LIBERTY BANDIT (12 USN, 10 JDSF, 3 RAN, 1 RCN), only four ships—RANS Hobart (DDG-39), USS Philippine Sea (CGN-75), USS Radford (DDG-169), JS Musashi (DDB-185)—will make it back to Yokohama, all with severe battle damage.
Additional Satyrs hit Okinawa. Several missiles, designed for hitting carriers, miss Kadena Air Base and land in Okinawa City. A typhoon of fire, silicon wafers, and steel follows the sucker punch. Ten air brigades of bombers hit the carrier task force: four H-6K, four H-20A, and two H-21B (licensed and improved versions of the Tu-160M2).
The Liberty Bandits—as they will be immortalized—fight their ships to the bitter end. They lash out like wounded, cornered hellcats. The skies are streaked by missiles of all kinds. Allied electrothermal chemical guns blast into the dark. The PLA garrison on the occupied Ryukus is left a smoking ruin amongst rubble and gore as long-range fires from Okinawa and a joint force of American and Japanese Green Berets descend like a host of avenging wraths.
The PLA would claim the scalp of Ronald Reagan at the cost of two brigades of H-6Ks, one brigade of H-21Bs, and half a brigade of H-20As; Reagan would be technically be scuttled after her CHENG—the ranking surviving officer—determined that the crew could not contain the fires raging aboard. USS Zumwalt (CG-1000) and her surface action group, reinforced by the JS Akagi (DDV-200) and USS Midway (LPV-19) carrier strike groups, launch a counter-attack against the PLAN assets at sea, sinking the Type 059B nuclear strike cruiser Kowloon along with six Type 054 frigates, three 052 destroyers, and seven Type 056 corvettes.
All the while, ballistic missiles rain down on Taiwan, Okinawa, and the rest of the Japanese Home Islands; because of communications failures within the PLA, the first planned orbital offensive is launched in a haphazard fashion over the next five hours. However, the sky will rain fire soon enough.
The Japanese Self-Defense Forces, still paralyzed, are unable to disperse their forces fast enough. Many OSATO air assets in Japan, in maintenance availability after the end of REFORT, are destroyed on the ground.
The People’s Army of Vietnam is incredibly hard hit as PLA spoiling attacks shatter their thought to be impregnable defenses north of Hanoi. The PAVN garrisons have been awake, in most cases, for days with several key officers incapacitated by lack of sleep as the Vietnamese government had the OSATO power most confident that this war scare was actually The Moment. The certainty of the Politburo and the need for maximum readiness would create a fatal brittleness and invite a disaster that had not been seen since the Fall of France.
Crash my detail. Get me to Marine One. Get Secretary Kim and Jason on the line. *incomprehensible response* Don’t give me that bullshit, John. Get it done.
— President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s response to the news of the Tokyo Security Conference Bombing, mentioning Secretary of Defense Andy Kim and National Security Advisor Jason Crow c. 2037.
The President’s formal order to commence combat operations comes as she is sped down Broadway. The Presidential State Car—the “Hyper Beast”— will reach 81 miles per hour as the NYPD shuts down the streets. The city will listen to the song of a steel bull charging down its canyons of glass and metal like a funerary dirge. The President is met at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport by three Green Top VV-35 Thunderbird supersonic VTOLs from HMX-1. The trio will proceed toward Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst until the President personally orders Marine One back to the Douglass Commonwealth. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will be the first sitting President to break the sound barrier as the VV-35N “Kiss Me I’m Irish” hits Mach 1 over Staten Island. The flight will sprint to DC by nap-of-the-earth with their active defense systems on maximum, escorted by a flight of F-26A Voodoo II NGAD-A air superiority fighters scrambled from Langley Aerospace Force Base.
The President had come to New York City for a summit on her sectoral unionization bill, and she will leave it as a war president. It is April 10th, 2037. It is the 81st day of the Ocasio-Cortez Administration. Her speech requesting a declaration of war will be delivered a little after 2 PM.
The Light of Liberty stands under siege. It shall not be snuffed out. *applause* I promise you this, so long as I have breath in my lungs and blood in my heart. — ¡NO PASARÁN! — THEY SHALL NOT PASS! *applause* We will fight. We will prevail. We will see this evil defeated as we have done time and time again. *applause* This Day of Infamy shall beckon forth a Reckoning of Justice that shall never call retreat.
— President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s address to a Joint Session of Congress Requesting a Declaration of War against the People’s Republic of China, the “¡No Pasarán! Speech,” c. 2037.
Taiwan’s government does not exist, even at this moment. Okinawa, Taiwan, and the rest of the Japanese Home Islands are drowned in a song of steel. Interceptors scream into the night to hold back the tide. The National Military Command Center linked to the Ground Moving Target Indication—space-based ground-air-sea surveillance array—watch in painted horror as the deluge begins. Analysts immediately notice a volley of unusually large but comparatively slow hypersonic missiles—what they assume are missiles—launched from one of the major three campuses of the China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamic, which had been the site of a flurry of activity in the preceding week. However, it is not considered a pressing concern, especially as the first pitched orbital battle begins.
But there is another salvo. And another. And another. As the PLA fires switch from targets on the Japanese Islands to the Marianas and the Philippines (Taiwan being continually struck by TBMs), a huge salvo of strange vehicles. It finally dawns on an Aerospace Force Staff Sergeant in the Air Operations Center at Hickam after the AOC narrowly avoids being stuck by an extremely long-range HGV. The weapons are not actually weapons—they are Xingkong 7 (Star Sky 7) hypersonic cargo gliders.
They are the vanguard of Cùn Jìn. The One Inch Punch.
XK-7 externally would appear derived from the X-30 National Aerospace Plane of the 1980s and 1990s, but unmanned and intended to carry about five tons of cargo to PLA forces in-extremis. However, it would actually be inspired by an unsuccessful proposal by Silent Arrow for a powered, long-range, heavy-weight cargo pod known as the ER-20000 or Angelfire. XK-7 is both larger and faster—powered by an engine scramjet. It utilizes a novel and aggressive—and purely propulsive—deceleration system to allow. The program would enter full production mostly because the Minister of Science and Technology determined that it could potentially allow China to equal the might of US military logistics (nearly ~15M USD in kickbacks were just icing on the cake) despite technical and economic concerns.
At first glance, it appeared as if DIA and the USIC had massively underestimated the number of XKs in Chinese inventory—and their purpose. This would turn out to be a mistake, as DIA had gotten the number of XK-7 fleet correct, with a confidence interval of 575 to 725. The PLARF had simply expended more than 90% of their inventory in two salvos (264 in the first and 327 in the second). The first assumption, that the XK-7s had been filled with explosives to be used as runway busters, proves to be completely off base.
These rockets do not carry explosives, landmines, nukes, or any warhead—though that does not stop them from exploding. Riding on this tide of howling metal are 19,000 PLA Special Operations Forces soldiers of Unit 31697—a group army-level formation so new that it was only assigned a military unit cover designator. Also known as the “Dare to Die Corps,” it was formed from the 76th, 77th, 78th, 80th, and 84th Special Operation Brigades—plus a headquarters formation and a battalion from the Jiaolong Commando Unit. The units, save for the Sea Dragon commandos, were sourced from the Western and Northern Theater Commands. Under the original plan for Operation 011049, these units were to be part of the Eastern Theater Command’s active reserve (to be used as fire brigades) or to punch up the less capable formations in the invasion’s third echelon. They are some of the most battle-hardened units in the PLA, having been used in the Special Central Asia Friendship Intervention(s), the Ugandan Debt Crisis, the Mozambique Civil War, the Tanzanian Punitive Expedition, and the Fifth Persian Gulf War. Not to mention, as one of the two “stone fists” of the PLA’s punitive quick reaction force, most of the officer cadre had served in First Sino in combat.
Practically none of these soldiers had ever seen an XK-7 before a week and a half ago. They, the ones that don’t die on launch or during flight, will reach a speed of Mach 7 riding them while liquid breathing a substance intended to keep the soldiers from dying for the G-force strain. The brigades would be stripped of most of their fires and trains, reduced to light mortars and loitering munitions. They would each retain their organic elements of powered armor soldiers in the legendary GY-3 “Guan Yu” exo-rig. Though by US standards, GY-3 is not “true” powered armor and merely an “individual armored exo-skeleton.”
The concerns of the PLA shìbīng are not assuaged by reassurances that the XK-7 had been tested for human occupants—especially after they are informed that it had failed to qualify for human occupants. Most of the records of the XK-7’s program would be destroyed by Operation UPPERCUT in 2039. However, it’s understood that the glider failed human testing by a decimal point—though which decimal place is still a point of contention in CASC.
This entire saga—one of the most pivotal moments in contemporary history—would be ignited by an off-hand comment by Premier Li Qiang as he ruminated on the Minister for Science and Technology's yammering about the XK-7. The Central Military Commission—their political staff in particular—had deliberated much on how to spoil OSATO’s plans and capitalize on their moment of opportunity, with considerable focus on Guam, which had become something of a White Whale for several staffers. Proposals ranged from a combined sea-air attack on Guam using civilian airliners, midget subs, and merchantmen sailing under false colors to the use of biological weapons delivered by DF-26. However, these proposals would be batted away quickly—even if the discussion about “how to silence Guam” continued. Once the idea of a cargo glider attack was spoken aloud, however, planning would begin.
However, it would proceed on two vastly different tracks. PLA officers in the Eastern Theater Command would operate on the assumption that the units flagged by the CMC for the operation were just a pool to draw together a raiding force to delay US forces from rushing across the Philippines Seas; accordingly, they would draw up several different landing sites and operation plans for the CMC to choose from. The CMC staff would draw together a plan for a full invasion by piecing together the raids and filling in the blanks.
But as the war began—with OSATO paralyzed—the CMC would side with their own staff and approve the maximalist plan shortly before the formal start of hostilities. Thus, the PLA would walk backward into a gamble starker than Sedan 1940. If they failed, their daring thrust would be flash-broiled into human SPAM and spread across an American state like a particularly fucked-up flash-mob rendition of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.
They would have victory, or they would have human hail.
Forty-two rockets are intercepted or fail during flight. Eighty-nine others are lost in the descent, mulch their occupants on impact, or have their incapacitated/wounded occupants put down by service personnel or by residents of the State of the Marianas after splashing down. Of the 219 other weapons targeted on the Marianas, 123 are intercepted. The active defenses on the islands are oversaturated by the well-timed barrage, with the XK-7s arriving alongside the Lingyun-10, DF-ZF, and DF-26.
“You know my buddies used to always say we’d kill E.T. with hammers if we ever met ‘em. Guess we gotta do that. ‘Cept E.T. was a Chi-Com half-bird who splashed down in one of those fuckin’ flamin’ hoagies smack-dab on Runway Six Left. So we pushed the can into a DF-26 crater—God knows we had enough of those—with the dozer, and then Chucky Chi-Com stumbled up the side in a full can-opener… well… we learned sledgehammer beats power armor if the operator’s got a TBI, no cap.”
— Technical Sergeant Henry Villanueva, USAF, 60 Minutes intervie, c. 2041
The US had assumed, rationally, that XK-7 would be used as a critical resupply asset for elite formations in extremis, not as a one-way 3,000 km trip for 36 Best Value™ helljumpers. In fact, PLARF Command did not consider movement via XK-7 as a viable strategy until pressed by the Central Military Commission.
On the Northern half of Guam, much of the PLA-SOF who survive the landings on and around Andersen AFB are killed by aircrew armed with hammers and wrenches and the soldiers of the Army’s 100th Infantry Battalion. The 100th, part of the 442nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team based out of Hawaii, had been delayed in returning to their barracks and had been sitting on the tarmac when the war began. The PLA-SOF, who land on Camp Blaz, are (briefly) more successful. They breach the base’s main HQ building before being repulsed and shattered by a scratch QRF led by Marine Special Recon Squadron 835 from the Special Counter-Observation Response Element.
The Chinese missile barrage is only partially successful—with American defenses on and around Andersen sparing the main aerospace force base from total destruction. However, Naval Base Guam is not so lucky; Chinese long-range fires knock out nearly every remaining ship in the harbor—including the legendary submarines USS Hyman G. Rickover (SSN-795) and USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23). Missile strikes against targets like the islands’ POMCUS sites, Military Sealift Command prepositioning ships, and civilian road junctions confuse American command as they happen but become major impediments to responding rapidly as successive waves of XK-7s fall to earth.
The PLA's main landing is at LeoPalace Golf Resort, where group army headquarters and two brigades make landfall unmolested. A third brigade makes landfall on top of Naval Hospital Guam. These forces quickly secure their key objectives, including the state government campus. The governor narrowly avoids being captured by hiding in a dumpster behind an Outback Steakhouse.
The hospital staff and patients make a desperate stand but are quickly overwhelmed, but give enough time for the wounded and the state government to escape north. As PLA staging from LeoPalace attack Naval Base Guam, the 1st Battalion of the 294th Marianas Infantry Regiment (Army Guard-Reserve) attempts to retake the Naval Hospital Complex and the Governor’s Mansion, hoping to fight their way to the Naval Base. The fighting is ferocious. The Marianas Congress Building is recaptured; the Governor’s Mansion is destroyed, and the Chinese flag that had been raised over it is left burning, but it and the Hospital remain in PLA hands. 1-294th is left badly mauled, with over 40% casualties. With no reinforcements, the lightly armed Marines and Sailors of the Naval Base are overwhelmed. Apra Harbor falls to the Chinese.
The PLA briefly regroup before launching an attack northward, brushing aside the remnants of 1-294th with some difficulty. The delay after seizing Naval Base Guam and time bought by the 1-294th allows 3-294th and 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines (one of 12th Marine Interdiction Regiment’s battalion interdiction teams) to arrive from the north. In a brutal meeting engagement, the scratch force stops the PLA cold at Won Pat International Airport. Guam holds.
The PLA-SOF elements on Saipan have much success at first slaughtering sleeping American soldiers, aeros, and marines. The remains of the 2-294th Marianas Infantry and the forward deployed, rotational 3/1 Reinforced Battalion Landing Team are able to retreat in good order into the hills west of Kagman and Kagman itself. The force, under the command of 3/1’s operations officer, Major Monica Hanson—the most senior officer still alive by that time—stubbornly refuses to collapse and repulses six bayonet attacks and a deluge of airborne tactical loitering munitions (ATLMs).
A PLA-SOF brigade secures Tinian and its airfields from its USAF Security Force Squadron in relatively short order; several aeros swim to Saipan, only to be captured by the reinforcements maneuvering from Tinian to Saipan. However, the small Aerospace Force garrison is able to kill the northern force’s commanding officer.
However, the PLA landfall on Rota does not go well. Two battalions are deployed in a single mass drop. The PLA had assessed that Rota would be the island with the least defenses and that it could then be used to launch an amphibious attack on Andersen. However, the 2nd Battalion of the 84th Special Operations Brigade and 2nd Battalion of the Jiaolong Commando Unit slam teeth-first into a brick wall. Counter-Landing Readiness Force-Keelung—a combined OSATO special operations forces battalion task force—had been waiting for the formal go order to surge into Taiwan when the XK-7s started falling from the sky. The unit—US Army Rangers, JGSDF Airborne Rangers, PAVN Commandos, and British Army Gurkhas—throws the PLA into the sea, despite being outnumbered by 2-to-1, at immense cost.
While Unit 31697 fails to capture Guam or Saipan, they do secure roughly half of the 52nd State. This incomplete success, while less than what the CMC had hoped in the feverous, jubilant exulation in the hours after the start of the war, still neutralize a key OSATO hub for interdicting the ongoing PLA invasion of Taiwan—cutting off one of the three key “roads to hell.” Access via Okinawa and the Japanese Archipelago was always likely to be tenuous but truly paralyzed after the Okura Attack. Access via the Philippines will be complicated in the coming days by the Day of Three Coups and its aftershocks. Taiwan will stand alone—its leadership coming together far too late.
The CMC’s plan for quickly reinforcing and resupplying the island—foreign-flagged civilian merchantmen carrying paratroopers meets with disaster, as the US quickly ID the transports as a ruse de guerre and the coastal artillery batteries on Guam use their Joint Strike Missiles, sending the 77th Sustainment and 77th Air Defense Brigades from the Western Theater Command to the bottom along with the 137th Airborne Brigade of the 86th Airborne Group Army. The 86th Airborne Group Army was formed to provide additional rapid and mass for the PLA’s punitive forces—and reduce the burden on the Special Operation Forces while allowing the 85th Airborne Group Army (the 15th Airborne Corps/PLAAF Airborne Corps) to remain solely focused on seizing Taiwan.
The PLA would be forced to run converted airliners to Guam for resupply—through the hotly contested Philippine Sea. The operation would prove to be extremely costly, destroying ~11% of Air China’s fleet, some 74 aircraft of various makes. However, the airliner runs ferry small parties of socials to Pagan, Palau, Yap, and Alamagan as the bulk of the 86th AGA secure airheads into the Philippines amidst the political chaos, and the Republic of China enters its death throes.
The Allied Powers will move to secure control of the seas and deploy a major counter-landing force to Guam. The PLAN will sally with every available carrier—something not thought feasible by pre-war OSATO analysts as the PLAN lacked the trained crews (the PLAN had adopted a strategy of switching experienced crews between ships during maintenance availabilities) and support vessels to sustain its full carrier fleet outside of the First Island Chain. The resulting clash of titans will be known as the First Battle of the Mariana Trench and end in a double upset—a PLAN tactical victory but with the Allied Powers thwarting a total defeat at the last moment.
Soon after the fall of Taipei—but before the formal surrender of the Republic of China—there will be the Day of Dueling Jumps. The 136th Airborne Brigade, the only para-capable brigade in the 86th Airborne Group Army, and the 504th Airborne Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division will drop onto Guam on the same day. With both sides unaware of the other’s plan—the drops will happen just hours apart, with opposing transports spotting each other at extreme range. The following ground battle will be nearly as ferocious as Day Zero—but neither side will yield.
The situation on the Marianas will freeze. Neither the PLA invaders nor the American defenders possess a sufficient overmatch to clear the islands. So they dig in and dig deep, both sides supplied by hastily cobbled-together transport routes. The battle will last until September 13th, 2038, and be ubiquitously known as the Mariana Sieges.
Second Sino will continue for three years. It will spiral from a war in the Western Pacific to a global-orbital war. Taiwan will fall. The Philippines will burst into civil war after a failed coup attempt and will be occupied by PLA forces. Catastrophe on the Sino-Vietnames Border will give way to a desperate gamble on the Perfume River. The Allied Powers will suffer their worst defeat at First Trench—losing seven carriers in an afternoon, including two CVNs. Great victories lead to great stalemate. There will be the island hopping, swirling knife fight along the Solomons, the seesawing campaigns across Micronesia, and the opposing rat lines of the Mariana Sieges and the Anderson Express. There will be fighting in the mountains and frost of the Korean Peninsula after the sudden death of Kim Jong-un, sparking the Nork Civil War and Korean Belligerency. The Politburo will press its luck and spread its economic and military might over theater after theater. OSATO’s grand strategy will leverage the PLA’s Victory Disease, turning it into a slow and insidious killer, leading to high-altitude battles on the Himalayan Front and chaos in the depths of the jungles and cities of Borneo.
If Uncle Xi wants to fight the world—we’ll let ‘im. And we’ll let ‘im drown it and bury the fucker in same the grave as all the bastards who thought they could rule the world with the barrel of a gun or the edge of a sword. Same shit, different face. He’ll die all the same.
— Rear Admiral Kimberly J. Scott on becoming Commander, Battle Force, Allied Fleet, Combined Pacific Command (COMBAT-ALFLT-COPAC), c. 2037
The turning point of the war will be the Second Battle of Mariana Trench, Operation HAMMERHEAD. The People’s Liberation Army Navy will lose fourteen of its twenty remaining fleet carriers over two days in largest naval battle in history. The Allied Powers’ Combined Pacific Command will fight back to the First Island Chain under the command of Admiral (later Admiral of the Navy) Chris “Chowda” Hill. It will not be a quick and decisive battle of fires and maneuver but a knock-down, drag-out fight to the death. The war will see the United States turn the People’s Republic of China’s hyper-centralized industrial cyber-defense infrastructure on itself. It will be a brutal, costly war, but a war that will be won not in spite of democracy, but because of democracy.
Second Sino will come to an end, an OSATO victory, with the signing of the Malmö Accords on the 21st of October, 2040. The Republic of Taiwan will declare its formal independence on the 28th of October, having elected resistance leader and former member of the Legislative Yuan, Freddy Lim, as its first president.
The war will create a generation of bloodied, experienced, and battle-tested veterans who will make up the heart, soul, and mind of the Composite Testing Force that goes through the Departure on the 4th of June, 2042.
God that is so damm good. Love the amount of detail, can't wait to see more as well! Probably one of my most hyped for series
Wow! One line suddenly stood out to me: "leading to high-altitude battles on the Himalayan Front" and I got an image of O2 bottle equipped Indian mountain troops fighting PLA 52nd Mountain soldiers at 21,000 feet on the Siachen glacier.