Drone Command

1 MAY 2017

The bloodred flag with the five golden stars snapped in the crisp morning breeze. The national flag of the People’s Republic of China was one of three held high by the naval honor guard, along with the flags of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and the East Sea Fleet commander, Admiral Ji Dongsheng.

Two hundred Chinese PLAN officers and sailors stood at rigid attention on the fantail of the seventy-five-hundred-ton guided-missile destroyer Kunming, its ASW helicopter stowed away in the hangar for the occasion. The ship’s skilled helmsman fought to stay in place as the vessel rose and fell in the long swells.

Admiral Ji’s commanding voice cut through the buffeting wind. The handpicked crew stood proudly before him at rigid attention in their starched white uniforms and broad Soviet-style caps. The admiral’s thick neck, powerful jaw, and broad nose had earned him the nickname Bulldog behind his muscular back. A shrouded object stood just behind him.

“A thousand years ago our ancestors crossed the oceans of the world. We are not becoming a new navy, as the Westerners believe; we are the world’s oldest and greatest navy, reclaiming our lost heritage, reclaiming our lost territories, reclaiming the vast resources of our waters from the thieving hands that stole it. We are the guardians of the blue soil of our homeland and will defend it with our blood and our honor.

“Today is a great day. Today we lay claim to that which was always rightfully ours. Someday you will tell your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren that you were here this day, on this ship beneath our glorious flag, taking another step in the long march toward our rightful destiny, our rightful place under heaven.”

The admiral paused for effect, surveying the proud young faces before him. He twisted around and whipped off the linen shroud behind him. An engraved white-marble stele gleamed in the bright sun, thick and rectangular like a giant headstone. Admiral Ji nodded to four muscled sailors. They marched forward in lockstep and lifted the heavy stone off the fantail and heaved it into the rolling blue water in a geysering splash.

The admiral shouted out the words from the national anthem, “Arise! All who refuse to be slaves! Let our flesh and blood become our new Great Wall!”

The officers and crew shouted and cheered as they pushed forward to the end of the fantail, but the marble stele had already sunk beneath the waves.

Ji’s weathered eyes caught a speck of gray in the faultless blue sky far above. A drone.

He smiled.

And so it begins.

TWO

ON BOARD THE JAPANESE SUBMARINE KENRYU (“SWORD DRAGON”)

EAST CHINA SEA

1 MAY 2017

I can even see the admiral’s gleaming brass buttons.”

Commander Hiroshi Onizuka had his eyes glued to the crystal-clear HD flat-panel display. A Sandia Multimodal Volant drone fed its images directly into his control console. Pearce Systems had just developed the integrated drone and sensor system, and installed it on the Sword Dragon for testing. Onizuka preferred his beloved periscope, but he was impressed with the expanded capabilities of the new electro-optical sensors in the retrofitted photonics mast married to the far-ranging surveillance drone. “But that’s not what worries me.”

Troy Pearce stood beside him, watching the same images. The former CIA SOG operative’s black hair was flecked with gray — one for every bullet ever shot at him over the years, he joked — and the laugh lines in the corners of his world-weary blue eyes were anything but. As the CEO of the world’s premier drone security company, he’d seen plenty of surveillance video before, but never while standing in a submerged submarine. “Looks like some kind of ceremony. A burial at sea?”

Onizuka pulled off his ball cap and ran a hand through his thick hair. At thirty-six, the handsome naval officer was the youngest sub captain in the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) and commanded one of its newest vessels. The diesel-powered Soryu-class submarines were the largest and most advanced Japan had built since the war, but the stealthy Sword Dragon carried only short-range conventional torpedoes and antiship missiles as befitting the JMSDF’s mission limitations.

“The way he was flapping his arms? I don’t think so. Definitely a ceremony of some kind, but not a burial.” Onizuka’s English was slightly accented, but perfect — one of the reasons Pearce was assigned to his boat. “Too bad we don’t have audio.”

“The Volant is too high up.”

“Yes, of course.”

“But we can get a closer look at the object they threw overboard.”