Shen clenched his jaw. The ROC’s air presence was solidifying into a multi-axis threat. This posturing was turning into something, an escalation that was rapidly moving beyond his ability to control.
“This isn’t good, sir,” Gong said quietly. “This is quickly turning into a powder keg waiting to blow.”
Before Shen could respond, a shrill alarm blared throughout the CIC. One by one, GPS signals marking their position and the ships around them began to flicker. The positional data they regularly received from the BeiDou-3 satellites overhead began to waver, then spiked. One second, it was showing them miles practically inside the Penghu Islands, then it was placing them adrift in the South Pacific.
“Captain, we’re being jammed!” the electronic warfare officer shouted in a panic. “I’m showing GPS degradation across all bands. Sat comms with headquarters just dropped — I can’t get a signal lock.”
“Calm down, Lieutenant!” Shen barked angrily. “We’ve trained for this. Revert to backup systems and get me a status report on what’s happening around us and with the rest of the squadron.”
The lieutenant seemed to regain himself when the screens inside the CIC flickered several times before shutting down. Commander Gong typed feverishly at his terminal when the monitors returned. “Captain, I think our systems are in the process of being hacked. I’m initiating a hard reboot of our systems now,” Gong relayed to him as the monitors turned off again.
The CIC erupted in a flurry of reports and cross voices as static flooded the comm channels that were still working. Seconds later, the monitors returned, and icons on the digital display appeared. Then they began disappearing or freezing once again.
Zhu looked up from his station. “Sir, we’ve lost contact with the squadron,” he exclaimed. “We’ve lost the aircraft feed. We’re being jammed across multiple broadband emitters. It’s saturating every channel. I can’t localize the source!”
“Sir, underwater contacts!” The sonar operator’s voice cracked. “Multiple… dozens… behavior pattern unknown!”
Shen rushed to the sonar station. The display showed contacts moving in perfect synchronization — too fast for conventional submarines, too organized to be torpedoes. Then it came to him… they could be unmanned underwater drones racing toward the ships of his squadron. The track closest to one of his ships was the frigate
“That track right there” — Shen pointed to it — “what’s the range to the
“It’s, um, it looks like it’s passing directly beneath—”
The sound of the blast reverberated through the CIC. The shockwave of the blast buffeted the
The emergency klaxon shattered the predawn quiet of the Joint Operations Center, its piercing wail cutting through the low hum of electronics and hushed conversations. Major General Yen Jiachun’s coffee mug froze halfway to his lips as the main display wall erupted in cascading alerts.
“We’re receiving an emergency transmission on VHF channel sixteen!” Captain Hsu Lichung’s fingers flew across his console. “It’s a Filipino merchant vessel — three-five nautical miles west of Magong Harbor.”
The speakers crackled to life with heavily accented English. “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! This is Motor Vessel
General Yen set his mug down with deliberate calm, though his pulse quickened. They had known this was a possibility. Still, they had somehow hoped it wouldn’t come to this. Now that it had, they had to deal with it.
“This is unacceptable!” Yen exclaimed. “In our own territorial waters at that. Get me a visual of the situation, if it’s available. Let’s get it on main screen,” Yen ordered, whipping the JOC into action. “All stations — Navy and Air Force, give me a tactical picture of what we’re looking at, now!”
