Beijing, China

Zhongnanhai

August 21st, 2025

President and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Wen Jiaxu was asleep with his wife when a knock at the door woke him out of his slumber. As he fumbled with the covers and placed his feet on the floor, he reached for a robe and slowly walked to the door just as the knocking started again. "Shhh, comrade - you are going to wake my wife. What is so urgent that it could not wait until morning?" asked the leader at what he recognized as his military aide standing in front of his bedroom door.

"Comrade General Secretary, sorry for interrupting your rest, but the CMC want to see you, now. Admiral Sun had said to tell you there has been a major naval engagement with the Coalition off the Straits of Korea," the PLA officer muttered. He seemed to be completely out of breath.

"Perhaps if the Commission hurried that much to see me, the situation is truly serious, Please don't let this be another defeat." thought the General Secretary.

In addition, a day before he also had to put out another fire in form of a set of leaked documents incriminating one of his favorite officials in a corruption scandal, also known as "Hu Wangping's tablet" from the name of the eldest son of the Minister in charge of National Development and Reform Commission, by ensuring the public that such documents were in fact inauthentic, by any means necessary.

"Tell everyone I will be over shortly," Jiaxu responded aloud. "I am going to get dressed," he said, and he closed the door, not waiting for a reply.

"What's going on, dear?"

"It's okay." Jiaxu embraced his wife after he's dressed. "I'll be right back, my generals and admirals need my presence."

"When? Every time that I want to just be with you, the country called. Right now, with our daughter on the way," Jiaxu's wife Lin Wangxia pointed at her bulging belly. "She wants your touch so bad. Our son Wang too, as well."

"I promise, my dear Wangxia. After this, I'll take some time off work, with my generals and admirals are doing everything they can to win this war for China."

Twenty minutes later, the General Secretary walked into his bunker, an operations center in the bowels of this offices inside the sprawling Zhongnanhai complex. From there, several military officers talking animatedly around a holographic map while others were reviewing several different feeds from drones and Tiangong space station. The room looked every bit the military headquarters it had turned into these past few weeks since the start of the war.

Despite the heavy casualties in Taiwan, protests were few in between, thanks to the ultimate success of the reunification process. Fresh from the victory, the subsequent prolonged bombardment and invasion of Japan at the same time as landings in Northern Philippines and land offensives across mainland South East Asia had been proceeding better than expected by occupation of Hanoi and closer approach of PLA armor into the strategically important Thai provinces of Nakhon Ratchashima, incensed by the failure of the airborne effort to seize it's air base. China had also taken most of Kyushu and destroyed part of Japanese forces in Western part of the neighboring Honshu Island, only for terrain issues, Japanese and American tenacity, as well as supply difficulties to rear it's ugly head. However, his generals and admirals had convinced him that everything will soon be alright in the end. PLA Special Forces raids in the heart of Japan had also been yielding substantial results with several critical rail bridges and tunnels were destroyed or damaged.

Nevertheless, the initial success had slipped away with more and more Japanese ground forces were committed alongside their Indian, European and American allies in support plus naval and air forces; particularly unmanned assets, with the fiasco in Iwakuni were still fresh in everyone's mind. In South East Asia, the Indonesians were increasing their troop numbers, particularly in Thailand, and were slowly grinding his military forces with allies on tow.

Admiral Sun and General Hu looked up and saw Jiaxu had finally arrived. "Comrade General Secretary, please, if you will come this way. We need to discuss the recent naval battle," he said urgently.

As the General Secretary walked towards the two chairpersons of the Central Military Commission, he saw the look of sheer anxiety on the faces of many of the generals and admirals present. "What is so important that it could not wait until morning, comrades?" demanded Jiaxu.

"Comrade General Secretary, there was a battle off the Strait of Korea. The Japanese had finally deployed their carrier strike group; 1st Mobile Force, part of 4th Escort Fleet centered on their newest supercarrier Shoukaku. Three hours ago, their planes came into range of our convoy escort and proceed to attack it," began the Admiral.

"Near as I can tell Comrade Admiral, this battle was a success, we and our North Korean allies sunk up to seven Coalition warships and up to eleven of their sea drones; as well as shooting down some of their precious stealth planes, and we don't even need to deploy our Dongfengs!" shot back the General Secretary, not sure why his officers were acting like this was some sort of disaster.

"Comrade General Secretary, there is more. Following our initially successful defense, the capitalist Coalition launched their ground based and submarine-launched missiles of all sorts - including hypersonics - and unmanned kamikaze boats and aircraft that left us reeling with four destroyers and six frigates destroyed or damaged along with nearly all our convoys and four of our submarines as well as seven unmanned missile boats. What is left of the fleet has retreated to Shanghai and Taiwan and also Qingdao. In the process, we lost one more destroyer and two frigates from South Korean missile batteries."

He continued, "In addition, and this is the most important; our naval presence in south and western coasts of Kyushu and Minamitorishima had been wiped out by Japanese 2nd Escort Flotilla and American Carrier Strike Group SIX led by aircraft carrier Kennedy. Our losses including aircraft carrier Yunnan, severely damaged, and two helicopter carriers, Guangxi, was scuttled due to heavy damage and Hubei sunk by a Japanese submarine. They fought against all odds with superior moral and political standing, and they faced death gallantly." As Admiral Sun spoke, he hung his head low, not making eye contact with the General Secretary.

Barely able to contain his ire, the General Secretary yelled, "What happened?!" Then he softened his voice and hissed, "Start from the beginning, Comrade Admiral."

Navy chief Admiral Li Kang looked at the General Secretary in the eyes as he relayed the sequence of the battle and what led to their defeat. "The degenerate capitalists had hacked into our computer systems on our combat vessels and supporting systems, to the point that even Tiangong got fooled temporarily. They took the ships' power systems offline; and from there they disabled specific combat systems like the point defense weapon systems and even propulsions. By the time our computer specialist could fully regain control of the power system and some of the defenses along with manual backups on board the vessels, the battle was well underway and the Coalition were already attacking them. The best our comrades could do was turn the fleet back to the homeland."

The Army and Air Force chief did also reported the same calamity befalling their systems in Kyushu. Everyone was crestfallen on how precise the attack was.

From his Shenyang HQ, CINC-North Army General Zhu confirmed the loss of the fleet, and added more.

"We've lost Fukuoka, and Japanese 4th Mechanized Division and reserve territorials supported by just-landed US 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade and what was left of the Separatist "Marines" - 1st Battalion to be exact - is closing in at Sasebo. Our holdings on Kumamoto were also about to be gone as an element of Japanese marines had reinforced their 8th Division. They can also count a brigade worth of Korean Marines in reserve in the peninsula... While in Honshu, Yamaguchi was close to become indefensible with Taiwanese separatist army are leading the way and Kudamatsu-Shunan City Area is about to fall as well. Comrade General Secretary, you have every right to arrest and shoot me on the spot, but I have to suggest that we withdraw and to fight another day!"

"He's really gutsy to say that..." the General Secretary mumbled at the said statement from one of his generals. 

As the People's Voice Zone - a kind of AI facilitated decision making filtering, virtual environment, and analytical aid system also known as the Yellow Jacket, done it's calculations, everyone finally came to a common voice, with the General Secretary remaining as the final say on things.

"Very well, first thing first, everyone must coordinate with State Security to find if there are any moles, traitors of the people, that passed our cyber defense plan to the Capitalists, right now. We are doing this parallel with what our next military action will be..."

"Will do, Comrade General Secretary!" replied Zhu.

Jiaxu stood there in silence for a couple of minutes watching the drone and Tiangong feeds repeatedly.

"The Japanese are too tough, right now, very well... Fine then! I think we should follow the suggestion from some in the Politburo Standing Committee and the recommendation from Yellow Jacket by withdrawing as fast as possible and while holding to our gains so far, we are to prepare our surviving fleet to execute Operation Zheng He instead! With our production capacity as well as good harvests so far, as long as the Americans were in the fight, the Japanese won't capitulate, nor South Koreans, nor Indians..."

"Comrade General Secretary, what's your next order?" asked General Hu.

Jiaxu restored his composure. "Comrades, I think that the Battle for Japan has been clearly lost; and now, I want our forces in Japan to be evacuated starting today; while long range strikes will certainly continue to keep those fascists off balance. We need every troops and equipment that we can spare before we can transition for Operation Zheng He. If there are any question from you comrades, ask me now, otherwise, I need to get some food and some time with my wife and son." The General Secretary was still in a state of shock and resignation as he looked at the generals and admirals standing around him.

There was no reservations from everyone present, that allowed President Jiaxu to leave the room.

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Joint Korea-Japanese Military Space Station Mirai/Mirae

When it's time to write the history of this war, no one would believe just how there was less action that what was expected of the world's first space war.

The joint Japanese and South Korean crew of Mirai/Mirae were the true "Protectors of Free Asia" as the unit's citation from both nation; Republic of Korea's Presidential Unit Citation and Japanese wartime-only Emperor's Own Unit Citation; was inscribed. Colonel Mutta Nanba and his deputy Lt. Colonel Kim Kwang-il had read at the celebration dinner after the first few months of the war.

Since the first salvo had been fired by their Chinese counterpart the Tiangong followed by Mirai/Mirae aided by NATO's Liberty Pilgrim, in a metal box two hundred miles above all the action, comparatively little progress had happened for months, in a relative term. However, the crew understood well on how the Chinese won't give up, aided by each parties and the neutral Russia had declared a two-hundred-kilometer zone of exclusion of "safe space" around each of their own space stations.

"Near space clear?"

"Exclusion zone intact" replied Captain Saitou Tachikawa. "All that's inside are friendlies. Recent entry was the Indonesian comsat launched out from a Sea Launch oil rig off the Gulf of Tomini last week that made sure to stay behind our orbit. Dual-use."

Saitou continued "I'll check the intel reports again."

"Make sure you do. We want no surprises," said Kwang-il, before he connected his intercom to one of the modules, called "Kanmu" named after a Japanese emperor from Heian period. "Cyber specialist crews, check for any anomalies."

In addition of attempts on cyberattack - with the most serious one was the sudden shutdown of the artificial gravity mechanism a week ago - the Red Chinese had kept the joint crew on edge by launching their Yaogan-XXX attack satellites, a simplified version of the earlier XXIX model, using an unmanned space shuttle that they called Tianma, heavenly horse.

Land-based anti-satellite missiles had been rendered useless by laser point defenses of the Mirai/Mirae and the other stations. Nanba remembered yesterday's communique from the neutral Russians about stray belligerent satellites or anti-satellite missiles that were shot down by the Pobeda.

An infographic from United States Defense Intelligence Agency depicted the ways military satellites can attack each other .

In response, using the relative safety of the Americas, Korea and Japan had unleashed their own swarm. Joined by US Space Force's DS-10 Shrike, Japan named their own offering the Type 25-I Combat Satellite, a simplified version of Type 25 while the Koreans had the Seonangsin.

"Today's traffic?"

"Be advised, we have four contacts, Identified as Yaogan-XXX, closing in our exclusion zone, they want to probe our defenses!" said Tamade the weapons officer, confirmed by his Korean counterpart, Major Bae Kyung-gil. Intelligence said that some of the newer satellites the Chinese launched had reflective coatings that can reflect laser energy."

"Very well" replied Nanba. "All hands, action station, activate autonomous mode on our defensive satellites!"

To be honest, he wanted to inquire about resupply as well as the associated critical maintenance to-do list pertaining to the main weapons systems, in particular the needed change of it's wavelength in response of the new development, but he had targets to be looked upon and most likely to be serviced, here and now.

The Colonel thought about his family below, and his astronauts' before steady pings began to chime; the indication that there are more than four contacts approaching the station, presumed by the combat algorithm to be hostile. This was not a probing act; this was a generalized attack.

"No matter what they threw at us, we'll give them a befitting reply." he thought to himself before issuing the most important command at all "Fire at those who managed to bypass our defenses."

It's just another day in the office... 

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A/N:

1. I have to remind you that here, the Chinese is much stronger than real life, so I made them to possess space shuttles on their own.