by Tom Hart
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
MAURITIUS
Zhang placed the phone down on the desk. Another diplomatic masterpiece complete. The Prime Minister of the Maldives had been unable to hide his excitement when Zhang told him China was granting him the city of Esperance in Western Australia to re-settle the entire population over the Maldives over the next two years. Naturally when three-hundred and fifty thousand of your people were living less than two metres above sea level you would be pleased if a generous benefactor offered you free land too. Zhang did not have the heart to tell the Prime Minister the Chinese Army’s climate centre estimated the Maldives would be under water in five years, but it felt good to help little countries. He picked up the phone again and was about to make the same offer to the Pacific Island of Samoa when his adjutant barged into his office.
‘Father, there has been an attack on the mainland near the site of the sphere.’
‘In Xinjiang Province!’ Zhang was confused. ‘Have the Russians gone back on the deal?’
If the Russians had switched sides it would spell disaster for his plans.
‘No, it’s the Australians, the ones who were in Afghanistan.’
‘But there were only a handful of them, less than a thousand. How did they get to Xinjiang?’
‘They flew their old Hercules across Pakistan then refuelled in Kazakhstan at the US Air Base.’
Zhang felt his temples begin to throb.
‘Damn those Americans. We will need to send them a strong message to tell them to stop meddling.’
‘Don’t worry Father, it’s already in hand.’ High command has authorised a magnitude 6 attack on Hawaii.’
‘Good,’ Zhang said calming down. ‘And the sphere?’
‘Still secure.’
‘Thank goodness!’
Zhang recalled the first time he had seen the sphere. It was so beautiful, its surface like polished glass. He remembered the reaction the sphere caused when it told General Rau, chairman of the General Staff that China would suffer a catastrophic environmental apocalypse from soil erosion and desertification from its chronic overpopulation.
The sphere said China could expect deaths totalling three-hundred million just from landslides. Half of her coastal cities would literally collapse into the sea.
The Central Committee acted swiftly. Rectification works began immediately. The Army was tasked with a massive re-vegetation program, planting native trees and shrubs across millions of hectares. The Navy was tasked with clearing millions of tonnes of toxic mud and chemicals from Chinese waterways. Approvals for new housing and commercial developments were halted.
It had been the sphere's idea to relocate a portion of the population to Australia. The sphere provided data on how it could be achieved. It had been surprised China had not already done so as it was such an obvious solution. An enormous empty continent sitting right next door.
Despite fifty years of environmental neglect there were now positive signs. Air and water quality were up two-hundred percent and the contaminated Mekong River delta was almost free of heavy metal and pesticide run off.
Only last year the Central Committee had provided grants to ten million Chinese to go and live with overseas relatives for a minimum of five years. Every little bit counted.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
LEVERAGE
Duke frowned as someone knocked on the door to his quarters. ‘Go away,’ he yelled. The knocking grew more urgent.
‘Go away damn you,’ Duke growled.
The door flew open and an Air Force Major rushed into the room. The Major saw the naked Duke with an equally naked Captain Taylor.
Taylor squealed and grabbed a sheet to cover herself. Duke calmly began to put on his trousers. By now the Major was bright red with embarrassment and decided the safest place to look was at his boots.
‘What is it Major, it must be important for you to come crashing into a General's quarters while he has company.’
The Major began to stammer.
‘Out with it man,’ Duke said.
‘The Russians have attacked the Baltic States!’
‘They were going to one day, so what's the drama?’ Duke asked casually.
‘NATO forces are in retreat sir.’
‘You mean US forces are in retreat,’ Duke said. Everyone knew the US provided the backbone to the underfunded and undertrained European contribution to NATO.
‘Let me guess you want me to ask Hydra to do something about it.’
‘Yes sir, General Franklin of the Joint Chiefs has ordered Area 51 to make the sphere ready for a counterattack.’
‘We don't just push a button Major. Hydra is smarter than us so we have to be extra clever about it. Besides she won't get involved in local warfare as she calls it.’
‘We have been given four hours,’ the Major said worried.
Duke rolled his eyes.
‘Please excuse me my dear,’ Duke said to Taylor. He bent down and they shared a kiss as the Major fled.
Duke did not worry about doing up the buttons to his shirt. It would help with the dramatic tension if he turned up looking like he’d been urgently summoned to save the world. There were many expectant faces around the table all. He realised they really had no idea what to do.
He adopted what he imagined was a tone someone like Churchill would use for such an occasion. This was a historic moment.
‘Right then, let's have the top five Russian targets whose destruction is likely to trigger a tactical retreat.’ The faces looked relieved. They could do that.
Ten minutes later Duke sat with a cup of coffee and the list.
A Russian Army Corp headquarters in Estonia, the Braslavia missile complex in the Urals, the Black Sea fleet headquarters in the Crimea and a Russian carrier group in the Mediterranean. All military targets and good ones too. But striking military targets was unlikely to discourage the Russians, they would be expecting that.
So he asked for industrial targets. Key infrastructure and that sort of thing. He asked for five but got a list with eight. An Air Force Colonel explained that he and his staff could not agree on the five.
Duke showed Hydra the list of eight targets. ‘What do you think?’
‘You know I cannot become involved in human wars Duke,’ Hydra said patiently.
‘Oh, this is not a war. This is a misunderstanding about lines on a map. What if I was to ask you to tell me which of these eight sites in Russia were the most poorly designed?’
Hydra answered immediately. It was an easy question for her. The two dams and hydroelectric station in the Ural mountains.
‘Why is that?’ Duke asked.
‘Do you have all day?’ Hydra asked
‘How about the condensed version?’ Duke said with a laugh.
Hydra paused for moment before speaking again.
‘The hydroelectric station is four hundred percent less efficient than it could be. If the central water tunnels had been re-routed a quarter of a mile to the West the site would be as powerful as four standard Russian nuclear reactors rather than one. The pressure dampeners are also fifteen degrees off their optimal alignment which creates a pressure spike in the turbines which wastes heat. Realign them and a further twenty-three percent efficiency could be achieved.’
Duke looked thoughtful. ‘So how would you fix that exactly?’
Hydra laughed. ‘Oh it’s a cinch. With minor heating of the bedrock beneath the site I can create a pressure differential to reduce the energy required for pumping by half. Then all I need to do is target the left intake vent with four 2.6 magnitude quakes spaced thirteen seconds apart. That would can realign the tunnels and pressure dampeners.’
‘That sounds like more of a helping hand than getting involved in a war wouldn’t you say?’ Duke offered.
‘Well it certainly doesn’t kill anyone and it doesn’t offer either side any military advantage.’ Hydra replied. ‘It would be not be in contravention of my code.’
‘Well that�
��s a good outcome,’ Duke said smiling. ‘Shall we fix the Russian's mistake then give them a call to tell them we helped them out.’
Hydra considered this for a moment. ‘What you say is logical. I will commence the terraforming. My code allows me to improve the efficiency of human systems.’
‘I'll go tell my Russian friends,’ Duke said.
*****
Marshal Marcus Alexander Petrov, chief of the Russian General Staff was not accustomed to being spoken to by lowly Brigadier Generals, especially enemy Air Force Generals. But this American had somehow obtained his private mobile number. How was that even possible, only he and his mistress knew this number?
This Duke fellow told him to contact the Chief Engineer at the Karinova hydroelectric works in the Urals and get the Russian army's geological department to monitor the site for the next half an hour. ‘I am sending you a gift,’ Duke had said.
Marshal Petrov scrambled every available aircraft within three hundred miles of Karinova expecting an attack by American bombers. But there wasn't one.
Instead he was getting strange reports that Karinova's power output had just quadrupled after a series of small earthquakes and was now stable at that level.
‘The earthquakes are far too precise to be natural,’ the Colonel in charge of the geological department told him.
The Chief Engineer of Karinova was delighted. ‘General, we are running at four-hundred and ten percent efficiency. The rolling blackouts in the Southern provinces can be cancelled. We even have enough power to send surplus energy to the mines on the Siberian Grid.’
The Marshal did not care whether a hydroelectric dam could now power several million more homes but he understood the significance of what this General Duke had done.
Duke gripped the handset loosely and extended his other hand to the Air Force steward for a refill. He could hear the Russian Marshal swearing in the background.
‘Could have gone the other way Marshal,’ said Duke. ‘Just as easy to destroy the dam as fix it. Right now I am looking at blueprints of the Moscow sewer network that runs underneath your house. I like the two roman water features in your courtyard. Venus is it? Would you like me to rupture a few sewer mains and cover your house and the houses of those other rich and powerful people in your gated community with raw sewage? Once I'm done then I could do some remodelling at the Kremlin.’
*****
The Russian withdrawal from the Baltic was completed in less than twenty-four hours. Duke was promoted to the rank of three star General and received a personal note of thanks from the President. He even received three crates of first class Vodka from the NATO Commander as a token of gratitude. Naturally he held an enormous party the likes of which Area 51 had never seen. Scientists and military staff alike struggled with massive hangovers for days afterwards.
Not everyone was in a festive mood. Marshal Petrov did not like being made a fool. He could barely contain the rage when his President forced him to stand down.
‘We cannot be held to ransom, we are Russians we fight!’
Not this time he had been told. There were bigger factors at play. What precisely those factors were was being kept secret from him. But his spies in the Kremlin had heard the name Shadow Weaver whispered softly in the corridors. Was it a code name for a spy or a ring of foreign agents? He intended to find out. His father and Grandfather had given their lives to the defence of the motherland in the Great Patriotic War. He would never allow his beloved Russia to be held hostage by foreign powers again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
EXECUTION
Zhang shot the Australian Prime Minister with his trusty service pistol. He was glad to be rid of the insufferable fool. The man had seriously outlived his usefulness.
With the veil lifted and the true nature of the Chinese presence known there was no need to continue the act. Zhang had always known the Prime Minister would be executed. He hadn't imagined it would be so satisfying. Having got to know the man Zhang now understood why Australia had gone from a base of hardened criminals to a soft, decadent people. Australians had never faced true fear. Sure the Japanese had bombed Darwin and sent their toy submarines into Sydney Harbour. But they never invaded the country. The US Navy had intervened and saved the day. Without the security blanket of the US, Australians were on their own. No British or American empires to save them.
It was the isolation that ruined the country Zhang thought. Safe in their island home and cut off from the tensions and rivalries of neighbours, Australia grew soft while China grew strong.
The Australian military liked to play soldiers in Afghanistan where they fought third rate militias with 1950s weapons. When faced by a first rate power the Australian military disintegrated. Only a single Australian army unit had put up a fight worthy of mention. The light horsemen in the battle of Melbourne. Zhang had seen the footage recorded by Chinese drones. Two companies of armoured vehicles supported by two companies of dismounted infantry had attacked a Chinese armoured battalion supporting a Chinese infantry brigade. The Australians had selected a gap between two Chinese battalions and exploited it. The two Chinese Colonels in command of the battalions had been sent home in disgrace. The Australians destroyed twenty-nine tanks and killed seven hundred Chinese infantrymen before being surrounded.
Even then they refused to surrender, destroying an additional Chinese rifle company and its vehicles before being overwhelmed and fighting to the last man. Zhang felt strangely saddened none had been captured so he could praise them for their courage.
The Battle of Melbourne was almost as spectacular as the dramatic but short lived New Zealand amphibious invasion of Adelaide. Two New Zealand frigates and a disguised civilian cargo ship landed four-hundred New Zealand soldiers, four tanks and a half battery of artillery in the dead of night less than twenty kilometres from Port Adelaide.
As the sun rose the New Zealanders attacked a Chinese battalion camped in the Adelaide foothills wiping them out. By mid-morning they were half-way to the Australian airbase, RAAF Edinburgh, in the centre of the city. No doubt they planned to secure it to fly in more soldiers. Zhang was furious. It was only the quick thinking of a Chinese Major of Engineers who hurriedly rigged the two main bridges into the city with explosives and cut the New Zealander's off.
The New Zealander's tanks and other vehicles were destroyed in under an hour but there were still fifty or so survivors hiding out in the city. They would be found and executed. The Chinese General in command of Adelaide had set a bounty of twenty-thousand US dollars per soldier turned in. Fifteen had been given up by Adelaide locals already.
Zhang knew Chinese forces had been lucky. The quick thinking Major of Engineers was now a freshly minted Colonel. Zhang had read his report. He would ask for the man to be transferred to his own staff.
Adelaide was occupied by a relatively small force of Chinese in comparison to the other cities. Only half a Division of infantry and a company of tanks. Adelaide was classified by Chinese planners as low risk for civil unrest or counterattack.
Chinese commandoes had captured RAAF Edinburgh on the first day of the invasion and now held a squadron of medium transports and two squadrons of utility helicopters. That was all that was militarily significant about the city, other than its shipyards, but they were too small and low tech for much use by the Chinese Navy. The Chinese had captured a single Collins Class Submarine undergoing deep maintenance at the shipyard. It was even more primitive than Chinese naval engineers originally thought. Its combat information system was so plagued by software faults it was a wonder it could even fire a torpedo.
The forteen-hundred Chinese students at the University of Adelaide and the ninety Chinese agents embedded in the Adelaide police force provided a thorough list of any troublemakers. They had all been arrested and sent to Tasmania.
Zhang personally contacted the Prime Minister of New Zealand to congratulate him on the audacity of the attack. He praised the New Zealanders for being the only country to stand by
its friend. As the Chinese admired loyalty, even when demonstrated by its enemies, Zhang was only going to send New Zealand a small gift of retaliation. Far less than could have been provided. A magnitude 4 earthquake in the centre of New Zealand's largest city, Auckland, was on the smaller side of what could have been.
Zhang's faithful Sergeant Zhou returned from disposing of the Prime Minister's body. Zhou had been at Zhang's side since the General was a lowly Lieutenant. Zhang owed his life to Zhou. Militiamen in the wayward North Western frontier would have decapitated him if not for the rescue mission co-ordinated by Zhou to rescue his platoon commander. ‘Shall I bring in the Deputy Prime Minister sir?’
‘Yes, I imagine he heard the gunshot and is sweating at the moment.’
‘No sir, he is a tough man, very calm actually. I think he would have made the better Prime Minister.’
‘I do too,’ Zhang agreed.
Chinese intelligence believed killing the Deputy Prime Minister would give Australians a hero figure to follow and inspire them to resist the Chinese.
‘He is popular with the Australian people so I am not allowed to kill him, only scare him,’ Zhang explained.
‘Unlike the Prime Minister’ Zhou said.
‘Exactly,’ Zhang said with a smile.
CHAPTER FORTY
SCRUB
Tony, Sarah and the surviving troopers soon lost the Chinese in thick scrub. They could still hear the occasional AK-47 firing a few rounds. The Chinese were no doubt signalling to one another in the scrub as it was too dense to use radios.