William McKinley, President
John D. Long, secretary of the Navy
Commander E. D. Taussig, U.S.N.,
Commanding U.S.S. Bennington
This 17th day of January 1899,
Took possession of the Atoll
Known as
Inscription of the brass plate reportedly
left on Eneen-Kio by U.S.S. Bennington
Preface:
Sich
seitwärts bewegen
Afrikaaner Naval Headquarters, Oost
London, Afrikaaner Republiek,
The Abwehr man walked slowly down the corridor, while thinking in this,
his last mission after a 30 years career. A specialist in Southern African
affairs, he was commissioned here in 2015 to serve as a liaison officer between
the Abwehr and the Ausweideners, his private nickname for the
Afrikaans-speaking people who he used to love but now annoy him so much,
specially certain Colonel Cohan of the Naval Intelligence Bureau.
In his first years in
But he wasn’t young now, and his superiors in
“Gustav! I’m glad you’re here” –said Diederich– “Let me introduce you to
the colonel..”
“We’d meet before, thank you. How are you, Colonel Cohan?”
“Very well, Colonel Husak. It’s always a pleasure to have the Abwehr
expert to help us. Here in the Naval Intelligence Bureau we lack the resources
you have back there in
Since Husak decided to ignore his commentary, Cohan continued:
“Nicolaas insisted we should ask you to come to check some strange
activity around the Crozet islands.”
Husak remembered that in recent years the relations between the Ausweideners
and the Macronesians had suffered a stumble due to a minor disagreement in
the submarine border between Prince Edward and Crozet islands. He also
remembered that even when the Macronesians insisted to call the islands and its
surrounding waters “Mawson Territory”, the rest of the world just call them by
the old French name.
“Are they committing more forces to the Crozet?”, asked Husak.
“On the contrary” –replied Diederich– “they’re pulling back their main
forces, and had left behind just old Niulakita class submarines. Also
they have allowed our prospectors to reach the border with full equipment, and have
ignored several border crossing with our probes.”
“And you know very well our relations are not precisely good right now”,
Cohan added.
“But what’s the problem?” –Husak asked– “Any lessening in the
cross-border tensions should be welcome. Besides, it’s probable that the
Macronesians are just preparing their main vessels for the manoeuvres they
announced last week”.
“That’s the problem, Gustav. I want to be completely honest with you;
after all, we’d worked together the last ten years, right? I want you to tell
me everything you know about this rumour I’ve heard since last week…”
“What rumour?” asked with slight exasperation Husak. It was natural that
he heard lots of rumours due to the nature of his job.
“This rumour about an immediate Chilean entry into the Macronesian
“
“Let me finish, please. These rumours say the Chileans will announce
this week their formal entry into the
Diederich let the gravity of the situation soak in Husak’s mind, who
suddenly exclaimed:
“Another Pacific War?… Impossible…!”
===============================================================
Chapter
1:
The
Slumber of Dragons
“And yet some of those who write say that he should have
lively and merry eyes, a nervy neck, a large breast, muscular arms, long
fingers, a small stomach, round hips, sleek legs and feet: which parts usually
render a man strong and agile, which are the two things sought above everything
else in a soldier. He ought, above all, to have regard for his habits and that
there should be in him a sense of honesty and shame, otherwise there will be
selected only an instrument of trouble and a beginning of corruption; for there
is no one who believes that in a dishonest education and in a brutish mind,
there can exist some virtue which in some part may be praiseworthy.”
Dell'arte della guerra, Niccolò Machiavelli (1520)
Imperial Japanese Navy
Headquarters,
Captain Saigo Shojiro finally reached the bridge of his new ship. The Ryuho,
the first of his namesake series, was by far the bigger and more powerful
submarine in the world, and he will have the honour to guide the ship through
her shakedown run, that would take Saigo and the Ryuho crew from
And the Ryuho not only was the biggest vessel made in the
history, it was also the most intelligent too: the AI designed by Toshiba
Neurosystems, nicknamed Kyoko, not only welcomed him and the rest of the
crew when they arrived, she also counted with the ability to control all
the submarine’s normal functions, including her own diagnostics and
reparations, complete access to all the levels and sections of the ship,
navigation, pressure and temperature control, the proportion of breathable
gases in the closed atmosphere of the submarine, every crewmember’s status and
their physical condition and vital function patrons, and a very long etcetera,
including of course the capacity to identify human speech and the ability to
follow verbal orders from the captain and his officers, and finally, the capacity
to remote control the sub-fighter flotilla resting in her interior.
The shakedown run, originally programmed for early October of the last
year, was postponed till today because, to the chagrin of Captain Saigo and
Nakayima Industries’ CEO, the IJN decided in the last hour to grant the
European firm GEC-Alsthom the contract for the submarine fighters that the
Ryuho would carry in its future missions. The Ryuho bays were designed
to be occupied by the Kagero-class sub-fighters, but a disagreement about
the final price per unit with Nakayima Industries, until then the exclusive
sub-fighter provider for the IJN, decided Admiral Iwase to grant the contract
to the European competitor, manufacturer of the Requin-class
sub-fighter. His decision meant a complete remodelling of the fighter’s bay,
and reprieved the shakedown run until this moment.
The only thing that stained Captain Saigo’s present happiness was the
idea, inhabiting in the most remote corner of his mind, that his father didn’t
show any glee when Saigo informed him of his designation as Captain of the Ryuho.
Their relations have remained strained since Shojiro announced his father of
his decision to join the Navy. His father, a loyal Army man, never approved his
entry in the
Captain Saigo’s
family now was limited to his elderly father and his wife, Michiko. His mother
died when he was a child, and his two sons, grown men already, had chosen to
abandon the military tradition of the family, and the idea that he was the last
Saigo in the armed forces since the long gone days of the Meiji Restoration,
caused Shojiro a horrid sense of… finishing. Nevertheless, today, as Michiko
reminded him this morning, was a day of celebration: this day was the
culmination of his military career, and with some Divine help, he could make a
difference…
* * *
United States Navy’s Pacific Fleet
Headquarters, Pearl Harbour, Hawaii,
Captain Wilkerson's ship -the
This was a very dangerous job, and the
However, his crew thought of him as a grumpy, humourless man, and the constant
disputes between him and his mischievous XO was a welcome source of distraction
for the crew, because, even when the
Nevertheless, this time Jonah Wilkerson led his ship to a different kind
of mission: they were sent to retrieve any kind of information about the new
Japanese sub. All he knew about the vessel was: it was big -very big- and would
pay a visit to any of the major Japanese bases in the Pacific as part of its
shakedown run. Since the new submarine
would surely travel to Truk in a few days (in this Naval Intelligence
could only speculate), Wilkerson's mission was to reach Truk, wait until the
data obtained in the shakedown run was downloaded on the base's computers to be
analysed, and then break into Truk’s computers and learn everything they could
about the ship. The “hacking” of the Truk computer must be done physically, by
“pinching” the optic fibre networks that connected Truk with the rest of the
Japanese military outpost in the
The pressure of this last mission, due to its importance and the
inclement tension generated by the fear of being discovered, has really strained
Captain Wilkerson's resistance, both physical and mental. He was wearied and
tired -28 years in the ocean, fighting undeclared, secret wars, frequently for
nothing- was something that prematurely aged him, and forced him to ask for an
early retirement. However, in
The
Two weeks after crossing the border, and after numerous unpleasant but
harmless encounters with Japanese patrols, the
* * *
Macronesian Alliance Navy submarine
Canberra, somewhere near Southwest Indian Ridge,
Captain Ida Makatti, commander of the Fifth squadron of the
North-western Fleet, couldn't possibly feel angrier. They not only assigned her
a flotilla composed mostly of old Niulakita-class submarines, they also
refused to approve her plans for routine incursions into Indonesian waters, and
now Admiral Griswold ordered her to return to General Headquarters in Auckland
for an emergency briefing.
A briefing? For what? She knew very well her job, and there was nothing
they could not tell her through regular channels. Ida’s ship -the
Even when the
However, Ida decided to control her anger and wait until the briefing to
expose her complains. Why bother? She knew how frustrating is sometimes to be
in the Navy, but the Navy is where she always wanted to be. Her family emigrated
from
Now, after 26 years in the Navy, the latter ten as squadron commander,
Ida Makatti ordered her XO to take charge of the ship during the voyage back to
===============================================================
Chapter
2:
The
"In our times,
one does not see that the fortresses have profited any prince, if not the
countess of Forlì, when count Girolamo, her consort, was killed; because by
means of it she was able to flee the people's attack and wait for help from
Milan, and take back the state. And the circumstances then were such that the
foreigner could not help the people; but later, when Cesare Borgia attacked,
the fortresses were worth little to her, and her hostile people joined with the
foreigner. Therefore, then and before, it would have been more secure for her
not to be hated by the people than to have had a fortress.”
Il
Penobscot-class submarine
Captain Wilkerson somehow
knew the whole affair would end in this way. After the Naval Intelligence
technician managed to let Truk’s computers to know they were outside “pinching”
their optic fibre network, the base’s entire Defence Fleet was outside, looking
franticly for them. Despite all his tricks and countermeasures, a Japanese
warsub was getting closer and closer, and it was just a matter of time it would
establish shooting solutions against the
With preternatural
calm, Captain Wilkerson ordered the destruction of all the archives, and
ordered the crew to prepare themselves to surrender. After all, the Pueblo was
an “intelligence vessel” and the armchair admirals in
Even when his crew
was dumbstruck with the prospect of captivity, they couldn’t fail to note the
equanimity displayed by their Captain while accepting their rendition. No one
knew that, in spite of everything, their capture would mean for Wilkerson a
respite from the tremendous stress and from his irksome Executive Officer.
Everything was really hard for him and his XO’s impertinent commentaries and
jokes made it worse. Wilkerson would gladly accept a cell in Truk, at least
there he would get some peace. He wasn’t so satisfied when he discovered who his
cell companion was…
* * *
Majuro, capital of the U.S.
Commonwealth of the Marshall Islands,
In the
The Marshall islands were converted into a U.S. advanced base in the
Pacific, and the presence of thousands of primarily young males and the
activities that inevitably accompany military bases fall heavily on local
residents: environmental damages provoked by the construction of gigantic
offshore bases for the new Wolfpack-class attack submarine affected the
fishing industry; the occupation of the 20% of the total land on the islands
for assorted military installations, often taken without the consent of the
landowners, and the increasingly “Hit-and-run” incidents were among the things
the natives were forced to tolerate. But the frequent episodes of sexual
violence were the most worrying problem: the “Commonwealth” women lived in fear
of sexual violence at the hands of
And was this last reason that urged Setsuya into action: when his niece
Yuri was raped and killed by a drunken Marine, and the culprit was punished
with a two week detention in Majuro base, he knew he ought to do
something. For a year he thought what to
do, the only thing he was sure was he wanted… justice… or vengeance… or
something to quench his sense of impotence; and when he was almost resigned to
quit his quest for that unnamed… thing he wanted, a Japanese man he’d not seen
before told him something that would satiate Setsuya’s thirst in spite of the
immense personal risk. The last seven years he’d carried out several petty
missions for Nakano, the Japanese Military Intelligence. The last mission
they commended him involved the delivery of certain
package to
* * *
Macronesian
Captain Makatti left the meeting as stunned as if somebody had hit her
in the head with a sledgehammer. “Unfortunately” -she thought- “I’m still
conscious”. She immediately went to the nearby airport, from where she and her
Executive Officer will take a transport back to
The total firepower of her “enhanced squadron” would amount that of a
small fleet, and there was more: the
Admiral Griswold didn’t said much, as always he reminded her and her
colleagues of their position as part of the Macronesian military and their
obligation to follow the civilian government’s orders, and then assigned the
respective missions to the different task forces. It was obvious Griswold
wasn’t happy, and after knowing her mission she wasn’t either: Ida would lead
her squadron to the southernmost Chilean possession -Diego Ramírez Islands- and
once there she would ambush any
She feared not the Argentineans: their Italian Vittorioso II-class
attack submarines were not a threat for her newer and more powerful Athena
and Avaris submarines and they had a mere handful of Testuggine
carriers; but the U.S. ships were an entirely different thing: if intelligence
reports were true, there were at least an entire carrier battle group
patrolling the Southern Atlantic, including the massive Abigor-class
carriers. And if it was not bad enough, there was not only the prospect of
combat in waters unfamiliar to her against numerically superior forces, but
also the sparseness of the Macronesians forces would force her “enhanced squadron”
to count only on the Chilean Navy for help. That’s what Ida most feared, to be
forced to rely on help from strangers…
* * *
Western Pacific Submarine Command
Computer Centre,
“Are you sure?” asked Ensign Ford to the sergeant.
“You aren't here to debate orders, Ensign. Your job is not to question
my orders, but to follow them,” replied Sergeant López.
Jonathan Ford shut his mouth and did what the sergeant told him. As part
of his routine labours he was supposed to check the identity of every person
who entered
Originally situated in Majuro, a terrorist attack supposedly sponsored by
But the money could buy an excellent ID system, not a perfect one, and
now with the biometric identification system experimenting some kind of
intermittent glitch, he had the obligation to check manually the clearance of
every person who entered the base, at an average rate of 200 per day. Majuro
has been promising a contractor’s reparation team the last two weeks, and
meanwhile it was really annoying to check out the non-enlisted personnel’s
identification: unlike the Navy people, these people wasn’t the same everyday,
and he ought to search in the old-fashioned photographic register to let them
go through. And sometimes the damn picture wasn’t there at all…
* * *
“An interesting proposal, indeed” –though the Prince. Even when his
Nakano agents had informed of Macronesian deployments in the eastern Pacific,
they had supposed the Macronesians were merely asserting their positions
vis-à-vis the U.S. and its Latin-American allies; and now it appeared -no, it
was a certainty now- the Macronesian were ready to launch an all-out attack
against the U.S. forces in the southern Pacific and even in the southern
Atlantic, if necessary.
U.S. President Bourne opposition to the voluntary admission of Chile
into the Macronesian Alliance, alleging the now bicentenary and painfully
anachronistic "Monroe Doctrine", the repeated menaces to both powers
and the blatant aggression represented by the economical embargo he declared on
the Alliance, made clear that an armed conflict was near. Lamentably everybody
could see that but President Bourne...
Prince Kita-Shirakawa, Kampaku of the Japanese Empire, knew how the
And Japan? Does irrelevancy await
But
Prince Kita-Shirakawa was well aware that in the last years, many
political commentators in Japan has suggested the possibility to limit Japan to
a parochial foreign policy, limit is defence commitments to Siberia, Taiwan and
the Philippines, and even some of them proposed to grant independence to the
remaining Nan-yo Gunto Special Prefecture -where small pro-independence groups
operate- as a way to avoid conflicts with Macronesia and the U.S. Privately he
though of these people as cowards: the future of his country depended, as it
has been since the remotest era, on the ocean…
How? How to stave off Macronesia and the
After three days of meditation, the Prince called for his experts on
foreign policy and the director of the Military Intelligence Corps: there was a
brilliant opportunity here, if only he had the wit to make his moves correctly.
He also asked the Japanese ambassador in
* * *
IJN arsenal Muromachi, 600
kilometres north of Chukku, East Mariana Basin,
Captain Saigo couldn’t help but feel an immodest outburst of proud while
reporting to
Now he understood why Ryuho designers call it “Sea Control Ship”: unlike
its 20th century predecessors, the Ryuho-class SCS not only
served as a carrier, but also contained an impressive amount of firepower, from
lasers to torpedoes to mini-submarines to small airborne and seaborne
“satellites” that served to broad the already wide spectre of its sensors; and
his SCS also had the capacity to carry entire platoons of Naval Infantry and
even helicopters for recognizance and rescue missions.
So far, Ryuho had honoured the first part of its name: Ryu,
the Dragon. Now it was time to test the second part: Ho, the
However, after his report Saigo received an emergency call from
* * *
Western Pacific Sub-command
Computer Centre,
It was easier that he’d thought: he’d just presented himself as the
technician sent to repair the ID system, and unsurprisingly the chronic glitch
happened in that precise moment, and then the ensign named Ford let him in. The
poor ensign was going crazy checking identifications in the old photographic
register, and it was natural Setsuya wasn't there, after all he was a mere
technician sent to repair the glitch some anonymous Nakano saboteur had
provoked a few weeks before his arrival.
Nobody paid attention to the activity he was displaying in the
entrance's computer: after all, he was just another "gook",
undistinguishable from the other "gooks", "japs" or
"chinks" that populated the
* * *
Captain Makatti had ordered her squadron to conduct a thorough
recognizance of the waters around the islands, in prevision of the incoming
carnage. Accordingly with the latest report from
"Never enough time" -she thought- "never enough".
"The same with the French, the same with the Indonesians... They never
allow us enough time to prepare..."
She had managed -with great difficulty- to convince the Chilean Admiral
in charge of the Southern Theatre not to join her around the Diego Ramírez, but
to protect her left flank and the multitude of sinuous passes between the
Magellan and Le Maire straits and the still disputed maritime border between
Her flagship would be positioned just behind the rest of her squadron,
which would serve as the first line of defence against the
* * *
Imperial Japanese Navy Chukku
Pacific Base,
For his surprise, Captain Saigo had found around Chukku numerous Akagi-class
carriers, Shiokaze-class destroyers, Kongo-class battlecruisers
and a whole array of IJN ships, in every size and shape. It could easily be the
largest IJN fleet assembled since the Pacific War, thirty years before. And
there were more surprises: Admiral Nakaoka would adopt Ryuho as his
flagship was a less pleasant one; and the news that in less than a week, and
most probably in less than three days they will be initiating hostilities
against the
Six hour after it arrival, the Ryuho had loaded enough supplies for its
incoming battles; and after an initial moment of despair, Captain Saigo was
ready for action: the only thing he really lamented was... well, Michiko would
surely understand.
* * *
Imperial Japanese Diet,
The news of the Macronesian attack against the
Unlike any other debate in the Diet before, this one degenerated in open
physical violence, and the Kampaku then ordered the dissolution of the Diet,
under the Constitutional provision of "national emergency", and assumed
absolute powers as the Emperor's representative. Then he declared the immediate
mobilization of the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces, the imposition of media
censure, and the suspension of several constitutional rights for the duration
of the emergency.
That night, as in the two weeks prior to the declaration of war, Prince Kita-Shirakawa couldn't sleep. In a matter of weeks he would know if he would pass to
History as the restorer of the Japanese Empire, or as its destroyer...
* * *
Western Pacific Sub-command
Computer Centre,
The virus had found its way to the core of the main computer, and from
there it extended to the rest of the West Pacific Sub-command's computer
system, in which it was now firmly installed. In the moment the Ryuho crossed
the border into the
===============================================================
Chapter
3:
The Way
of the Warrior
“In
war those who sacrifice themselves in the fire of arrows will get the abode of
inferior deities, and those who conduct warfare unhappily thinking that death
is the only result of war they get the realm where the lost spirits dwell, and
those that retreat or go begging for their lives but yet killed get the
concealed world and those that are fully aware of the Way of the Warrior and
conduct righteous warfare they go to the realm of pious celestial spirits.”
Aranya
Kanda, Valmiki Ramayana (third
century BC)
Western Pacific Sub-command
Computer Centre,
Some places in the base were still burning. The IJN attack left nothing behind:
office compounds, the communication systems, the docks, the submarines and
their crews... At a cost of a heavy cruiser and a light destroyer for the IJN,
the USN submarine command was destroyed. Almost two dozens of Behema and
Nimrod warsubs, and several minor vessels rested now in the shallow
waters around the island.
Three days later, an IJN hospital vessel was retiring the injured and
the dead from the destroyed base. Ensign Jackson lied exhausted in a bed of the
makeshift infirmary, waiting the evacuation personnel. "At least" -he
morosely thought while watching his remaining leg- "the war is over for me
now… The war is over for Sergeant López, too” –he told himself when he saw they
were retiring Aarón López’s corpse…
* * *
200 kilometres north of
The offensive ended sooner that Captain Saigo expected. The
"After 30 long years,
"I hope so, Nakaoka-san" -replied Captain Saigo.
The war so far was an uninterrupted chain of Japanese victories, thanks
to the surprise achieved at Wake, and the simultaneous uprisings in the
* * *
Nazca Ridge, 900 kilometres west of
Iquique, Chile,
After the West Scotia Basin Battle, Ida Makatti and her “enhanced
squadron” haven’t ceased to fight. She’d traversed the entire Chilean coast in
the last weeks: with Chilean help, she had destroyed the USN forces that, as
she’d expected, tried to reach the Pacific through the
“Captain, shooting solutions acquired on the two Nimrods.”
“Captain, tubes 1 through 7 loaded and open - ready to fire on your
orders.”
“Fire”
The uninterrupted
fighting has cost her dearly: three Wellesley-class carriers and nine Avaris-class
attack submarines -and their crews- were lying in the bottom of the Chilean
waters. But her heavy cruisers were intact, and she’d received news of incoming
reinforcements:
“Captain, two USN warsubs, dead astern.”
“I've got incoming -three torpedoes. “
“Fire intercepts.”
“No time, Captain.” –responded her tactical officer
“Confirmed. Impact in thirty seconds.” –added another of her officers.
“All decks. Rig for impact.”
“Twenty seconds.”
“Fifteen seconds.” –grimly exclaimed the communication officer.
The torpedoes
slammed the
“Two confirmed hits. Hull breech, decks three and four.” -announced her
tactical officer…
Sadly, her flagship, the
* * *
Near of
"Stupid man"- thought Captain Saigo. "He is a…a…” He'd
not complete the thought even in the secrecy of his own mind. And due to
President Bourne’s stubbornness, he and his ship were participating in the
Macronesian offensive against the
Therefore, the Imperial Navy Command was ordered to lend some help to
the Macronesians, while making sure such help would not turn the situation
decisively in Macronesia’s favour, thus impeding the
===============================================================
Epilogue
"Eternal peace is a dream -and
not even a beautiful one. War is part of God's world-order. Within it unfold
the noblest virtues of men, courage and renunciation, loyalty to duty and
readiness for sacrifice -at the hazzard of one's life.”
"However, who can deny that
every war, even a victorious one, inflicts grievous wounds on all involved?
Neither territorial gain nor billions in indemnity can replace the dead nor
offset the mourning of families.”
Helmuth von Moltke, the Elder.
IJN provisional Sea Control Ship
Base, Eneen-Kio Island,
The reconstruction efforts had been fruitful: in a matter of weeks the
new base for the IJN Sea Control Ships would be finished, and Ryuho and her
sister ships will have a new home. Captain Saigo Shojiro used his free time to
familiarize with the new layout of the military facilities in and around
Shojiro expected the Naval Command would exempt him from attending the
signing of the Paris Peace Treaty. Even when he was sated with the outcome -
“The Gods were merciful” -thought when he remembered the price
Shojiro walked aimlessly around the facilities, until he found a spot
still covered with sand, instead of the concrete and metal that predominated in
the rest of the island. Suddenly, he took off his shoes and walked towards the
water. This minuscule beach was located in the western shore of the island, and
Shojiro was able to see the Sun when it touched the horizon: in his mind it was
Amaterasu Omikami who was kissing his distant homeland, as a Divine benediction
in the commencement of the new chapter in the history of
