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In the belly of the ship, in the command post beneath the fin on the ship’s upper level, several officers and men stood watch in the dimness of the room’s red lights, the glowing navigation plot, and ship control console instrument displays. The room’s silence was broken only by the bass thrum of the air handlers moving air into the room, accompanied by the music of the whining firecontrol computer consoles set into the port side of the room. The center of the room was taken up by an elevated platform surrounded by smooth stainless steel handrails, called the command deck, where the commander’s console and command chair were mounted astern of the twin periscopes. Astern of the command deck, two navigation tables were arranged, one of them in an area of darkness. Its electronic flat panel display was set up to communicate with the firecontrol computer, showing a small area of the sea around them. The second navigation plotting table was illuminated by a dim red lamp. The display looked down on the surface of the earth from high above, showing the East China Sea at the southern approaches to the Strait of Formosa. In the center of the plot a glowing red dot marked their position. Behind them, to the north by twenty nautical miles, a green dot depicted the fleet formation of Battlegroup One as it made its way south on the long voyage to the Indian Ocean on this mission of revenge.

Leaning over the navigation plotting table was the tall, lean form of Lien Hua, the commanding officer of Nung Yahtsu. Lien studied the chart display, deep in thought. He walked his dividers along the track line going through the dot of the ship’s position, calculating the distance and the time until they entered the South China Sea, and from there around the Indonesian island of Sumatra to the Strait of Malacca, the entrance corridor to the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal southeast of the Hindu Republic of India. The point at the northern run of the Strait of Malacca was marked with a broken curving line, the curve denoting the point that the Chinese plasma tipped heavy cruise missiles would finally be in range of their Indian targets. The battle group could not get there fast enough for Lien Hua.

He glanced up at the chronometer bolted to the bulkhead above the cables leading to the ship-control console, the brass instrument a gift he had given to the ship. The chronometer had been taken from a British sailing vessel during the Opium War of 1839 as the barbarian calendar reckoned time. Lien’s ancestor Lien Bao, the great-grandfather of Lien’s great grandfather had been killed by a British Royal Navy lieutenant in that three-year struggle that had resulted in England taking Hong Kong. Not long after, the British dogs stole Burma from the breast of China, the Russians took Manchuria — in violation of China’s first treaty with a European power — and the French ripped Indochina from the dynasty’s empire, feeding on Chinese territory like a hyena eating a corpse.

He turned his mind away from world politics for a moment to think about his wife and their twin girls. Po, his wife, was petite, and the doctors never suspected she would have twins. Twins were problematic in China, where the rule was that a citizen may only have one child, and it was typical that twins would be separated. But without Lien saying a word to him, his superior, Admiral Chu HuaFeng, had intervened with the PLA General Staff, which had had a word with the civil authorities, and Lien and Po had been allowed to keep both girls. The news that they could keep both babies came at the same time that the Julang-class final design was rolled out, and Chu placed Lien in command of the first unit of the Julang-class. It was as if the heavens had smiled upon him. It was then he had found his faith in the Life Force of the Universe, and felt the current of destiny that he had ridden until this moment, the curve of life that would carry him to execute China’s revenge upon the naval forces of the West, his hatred of China’s enemies and his love for China mixing inside him like two serpents entwined.

He checked the chronometer again. It neared midnight, Beijing time. He pulled a phone to his ear and dialed up the first officer’s stateroom. The sleepy voice of Zhou Ping answered.

“Station the command duty officer,” Lien Hua ordered. “I am retiring for the evening. Wake me at two bells of the second watch.”

“Yes, sir. Any night orders for me, Captain?”

“Only the standard ones for this mission, Mr. First. Detect the enemy and pierce him until he dies in howling pain.”

Admiral Kelly McKee walked slowly down the pier, deep in conversation with his chief of staff, Karen Petri. Despite their previous caution about being watched, today McKee had arrived in his staff truck with the flags on the fenders. The people watching them already knew something was going on, since every submarine except Hammerhead had already departed the piers of Norfolk, leaving the base looking lonely and deserted.