There was an instantaneous response.
“To Han Wushi!” the thousand dignitaries roared in unison amid the blazing flashes and humming television cameras. The shouts of Wu’s name were an oath of loyalty to the new regime. A pledge by civilian leaders and military officers alike that they were united in the spirit of young Wu for the greater good of China. A testament to the shared, secret fear, Han thought, of the wakened giant across the seas, whom China’s army had failed to strike dead in its sleep. Han mouthed the words as a lone cameraman snapped a picture of him before scurrying toward the center of the world: Han’s son and daughter-in-law.
All stood — some on tiptoes — to watch as Wu and Yi took to the parquet dance floor. Bathed in the brilliant glow from a dozen television cameras, the young couple — China’s prince and princess — waltzed amid a forming ring of smiling generals and cabinet ministers. Old men in uniforms mixed and conversed jovially with old men in suits in a way that they hadn’t done for the last decade. An even thicker ring of flashing still cameras sent the unmistakable message to all of China and the rest of the world.
Unbeknownst to Han, the civilian leadership had ridden two horses into the final confrontation with the military. At the last moment, the prime minister had chosen compromise instead of the confrontation that Han had been chosen to lead. The change in policy had led to the change in personnel. Young Wu — the perfect hybrid of the military and the civilian — would steer China away from its destructive political collision.
Out with the old, Han thought bitterly. In with the new. The king is dead. Long live the king!
Han rose from the table and slipped — unnoticed — out of the ballroom. The political animals who’d once bowed down to Han now ignored him completely. He was the bitter past. Wu was the shining future.
Han returned immediately to his apartment. There, Shen Shen waited before the television set in her short negligee. Her eyes were red from crying, but her jaw was set in anger. She had returned to Beijing with Han on his private jet, scheming and plotting the entire way.
“Did you talk to him?” she asked Han.
“No,” he replied, “but Wu is making the rounds at corporate headquarters in Hong Kong tomorrow. He’ll be staying at the family’s home. I can get you in there.”
“Will he be alone?” she asked.
Han nodded and smiled. “Yi is staying in Beijing.”
“What about tonight?” Shen Shen asked. “Do they have separate beds?”
“I doubt it,” Han said, laughing cruelly.
Shen Shen ground her teeth. “But still, he goes off and leaves her the day after their wedding.” She turned back to the television. Young Wu laughed gaily as he spilled the champagne that he was attempting to pour into Yi’s mouth. Yi was older than Wu — twenty-one — but she giggled like a girl half her age. All the ancients who were clustered around them — whom Han had never in his life even seen smile — laughed with the two frolicking young people. The broadcast symbol of the happy lives that lay ahead — some day — for all of China’s returning soldiers.
“Bitch!” Shen Shen cursed, crushing a satin pillow in her hands.
“I’ll take care of her,” Han said, “you do your thing to Wu, whatever that is.” He smiled, turned off the lights, and found her body in the glow from the flickering television, at which the two lovers stared until both reached orgasm.
Captain Stephanie Roberts, United States Army, stood atop the platform overlooking the sparkling blue water. A dozen surface warships dotted Philadelphia’s harbor, but Admiral Thornton, her escort, was telling her that the arsenal ships’ most important escorts were invisible. “Our New London shipyard in Connecticut has been turning out attack submarines at a fast clip,” said the chief of naval operations, wearing dress blues with gold epaulettes. “Those subs will keep the seas around the battle group clear of Chinese submarines.” The admiral looked exceedingly pleased, Stephie thought, to begin playing — at long last — a starring role in the war. “The exact number is classified, of course,” he leaned closer to Stephie and whispered, “but it’s more than the Chinese think we’re capable of producing. Way more.” He winked at Stephie, and she smiled.
Down below, bands played to crowds of sailors in navy blue and civilians waving flags and holding aloft banners printed with patriotic slogans. Stephie guessed that the civilians were workers and families. “Are you on leave?” Admiral Thornton asked Stephie.
“Yes, sir,” she replied curtly.
“Where is your unit now?” another senior naval officer asked.
“Southern Virginia,” Stephie replied.
“God bless ’em,” the jubilant Thornton commented to the smiles of officers and their wives in the two rows of seats behind Stephie. “Well, we oughta start making things a little easier for you. Right, boys?” Thornton asked the all-male senior naval officer corps around him. There followed a chorus of, “Yes, sir!” from the men in blue.
Stephie turned away and thought disparagingly, Navy kiss-asses! Thornton waited for her to say something. “When will the arsenal ships actually put to sea?” she asked. “I mean, with crews and ready to fight.”
“Well,” Thornton replied, “that’s actually classified also.” He leaned over to her. “Next week,” he whispered. The captains and rear admirals who surrounded them all suppressed knowing grins with contortions of their faces. They clearly couldn’t wait.
The bands stopped playing, and Stephie’s father’s voice boomed over the loudspeakers. Stephie watched her father on a television monitor. He stood at the bow of a massive arsenal ship five hundred meters away. His speech to the crowds was short but was punctuated by a dozen outbursts of applause, cheers, and shouts from the adoring crowd. No cheers were louder, however, than after the last words that he spoke.
“I commission this vessel,” he boomed triumphantly, “the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan!”
The roar rose up as he smashed a bottle against the hull of the half-million-ton behemoth. Stephie looked out from her own, distant platform at its long, flat deck, which resembled a supertanker’s. But instead of oil it contained eight thousand vertical, auto-reloading silos. And in its bowels, 100,000 special-purpose missiles of ingenious variety filled its magazines.
“Men and women of the United States Navy,” Bill Baker shouted, “man this vessel and bring her to life!”
The bands played again. Sailors in dress uniform sprinted up the gangplank. A dozen fighter aircraft did a flyby, followed — appropriately — by a flight of sixty missiles, which performed orchestrated aerobatics overhead. When they burst in a perfectly timed unison, it was Stephie’s turn in the limelight.
She was petrified. Her hands were so cold she tried not to touch her own skin. Television cameras turned to her. Her father, on his identical platform, smiled as he watched her on his monitor.
Admiral Thornton handed her a huge magnum of champagne in a mesh net at the end of a long rope. Stephie stepped up to the huge cluster of microphones, squinting as camera flashes nearly blinded her. She cleared her throat.
“Go ahead,” Admiral Thornton whispered.
With all her might Stephie swung the bottle through thirty feet of open air. The buzz from the crowd below rose even before it smashed against the mammoth black bow.
There was a smattering of laughter from the crowd. She winced. She was supposed to do that at the end, not the beginning.