Джон Шеттлер - Condition Zebra - The Next War - 2025

Everyone on the bridge gave a cheer.

Fedorov remembered a time when Karpov would have hovered over Samsonov at the CIC, even insisting on toggling the switch to fire the missiles, wanting to make sure it was his hand sending out the fire and steel. Yet now he seemed a changed man. With every hit, he had turned to Samsonov, praising him, handing him the laurels. In truth, he thought, neither man killed that ship. It was Kirov . The great battlecruiser had received the targetign information from the American Sentry, and Samsonov had merely seen that it was correctly transferred to the fire control system. Yet he had programmed in the three turns required to move the missiles where Karpov wanted them. After that, it was all Kirov , the mindless ship that had carried them so far, into so many battles, and without ever suffering defeat.

I wonder, thought Fedorov. Was Kirov just an extension of our will? After all, it did nothing unless the officers and crew told it to. Then again, were we merely the means the ship used to impose its steely will on the sea? You could look at it that way, he thought. Now we must brace for the inevitable counterattack, never an easy time on the bridge when the missiles come for us. Let’s hope we can pull through, as we always have. Karpov has always kept us safe.

Has he? Again, wasn’t it Kirov that has kept us safe? The ship has radar eyes that see things none of us know. All we do is give the command to fire. From that moment forward, our lives and fate are solely in the hands of this ship. It seems a living thing, with a computer mind of its own. Yes, a great Sea Dragon, Mizuchi , and we are just riding its scaly back, watching it breathe fire in battle, and hoping we live to find calm and safe water yet again….

Aboard the carrier Taifeng , Admiral Wu was mortified. Shandong was gone…. He knew that ship and crew, having moved his flag there after Zhendong was torpedoed. Now he was on the finest carrier in the navy, Taifeng . Pass like thunder and lightning, he thought. Move like wind. We open the battle by striking at Singapore, and within minutes, Shandong is gone….

How can I live down the shame? This is the third time I have been ordered to command the waters off Singapore, and while I have driven off the Royal Navy, two precious aircraft carriers that were under my command have suffered hard fates. Without them, we cannot sail far from our shores, no matter how many destroyers we build.

That thought sat on his shoulder like a dark and noisome crow. This war is not going well for us. It may seem so in a strategic sense. Yes, we have closed Suez, and still dominate the Arabian Sea, but when Sun Wei came north, our watch ended on the sea lanes between the Cape and Diego Garcia. Yes, the plan to seize Saudi Arabia is well underway, but there is a limit to what the Iraqi Army can do. With the Siberian front still dangerous, can we afford to send military aid there? Yes, we have the Ryukyus, but the Americans have backed Japan, and that issue is not resolved. Yes, I have driven the British from Singapore, but something tells me the Americans and Siberians will not leave so quickly.

In the broader sense, look at what we have lost! We have had to abandon all our bases in the Mediterranean, and along the West African coast. Sun Wei has been wrestling with the British and Americans, and now he withdraws to the Gulf of Oman. I cannot even secure the waters off Singapore and maintain a fleet there, and the loss of Shandong burns….

Consider our naval losses. Half our carriers are laid up with two on the bottom of the sea. Eight of 25 Type 055 destroyers have been sunk. We have lost 22 other destroyers, and 18 frigates! This does not even include the five Korean destroyers lost, and the single ship from Vietnam. So add those and we have lost 56 ships!

The Americans? We managed to put damage on one of their new destroyers, and a scratch or two on their battlecruiser, but not a single ship in their navy has been sunk! We can only console ourselves with the fact that we could easily master the Royal Navy, sinking a submarine, two of their carriers, five destroyers and 13 frigates, with six more sunk from the Singapore fleet. That makes 27 warships, but we lost twice as many ships as our enemies. This does not bode well.

Sun Wei was unable to match even a single American carrier group in the Arabian Sea, and he had over 30 ships! The Americans strike him time and again with their fighters, and he can do nothing in return. I think we have been fooled by the success of our YJ-18 against the British. That missile killed their ships easily enough, but against the Americans, it cannot reach their speedy aircraft carriers. Yes… They can stay outside our range, and hound us with fighters day and night. We should have loaded out with a preponderance of YJ-100’s instead of the YJ-18. Those have a 430 mile range, and they would push that carrier farther off, perhaps to the limit of its fighter strike radius. I must inform Beijing of this. Surely they must see it as well. Yet how many more of these missiles do we still have?

I suppose I should be more realistic. War is war. We must expect losses, but right now, Beijing must be getting concerned, particularly after the loss of Shandong . It was that damnable Siberian battlecruiser. It sunk the Sea God, Haishen . It damaged Shandong earlier, and now it finished the job…. So what to do?

I have 112 of those longer range YJ-100’s, but look, the enemy ships have disappeared from our radar screens again, and now I must re-acquire them. At least Shandong was able to launch most of her J-31’s before it went down. Yet now I must find a place to base them. I will have to transfer all ten of my helicopters to ships that do not have one assigned. Then I can make room for more J-31’s. I will order my fighters to sweep south, destroy the enemy CAP, and find those damn ships again! To aid in that, the Vietnamese group will continue to pound their airfields.

Beijing cannot be happy with what I have done here. I may have but one chance to redeem myself, and I can only do that by sinking enemy ships and driving them off. And at the top of my list I must kill that Siberian ship— Kirov , the demon no one even knew about until it suddenly appeared. Yes… That ship must die.

Admiral Wu Jinlong was a very determined man.

“Whalesign Three, Come in. Whalesign Four, do you copy? Please acknowledge. Over.”

The pilot of Whalesign One was confused. He had been ordered to investigate the sea ahead, a dangerous mission, because he would be flying right into the potent SAM envelope of the contacts ahead. They were registering as destroyers, and that meant HQ-9’s, with an 80 mile range. Thus far, the F-35 had been able to penetrate that deadly airspace unseen, but there was always a chance of being detected.

Yet now he had lost contact with the two other planes in his flight, which was most unusual. He had detected no missile firings, and all his equipment seemed to be functioning normally—but was it? Those ghostly radar emissions ahead kept moving, disappearing, returning. The radar had never acted like that. His first thought was that he was being heavily jammed, but that wasn’t the case here, the radio spectrum was quiet and clear. He should be getting pristine returns on those surface ships. Was his radar dodgy?