White House Situation Room – 0710 Local
Besides Kavanaugh and Arnold, only POTUS had the full picture. That was by design.
What the others did know was alarming enough: a U.S. Navy destroyer, the USS Vance, had sunk off the coast of Luzon. Its post-event signatures offered no tangible evidence of what occurred, and none of the twelve survivors could offer more than pure conjecture.
Shortly after, a commercial carrier out of Cebu also went down; again, no rationale for a sudden breakup that drove the vessel to the bottom in under four minutes. Philippine divers who investigated the wreck found the hull split in half and described it as some kind of “black reef” event, which was, of course, more myth than science. Once again, there was no unusual evidence; just junk strewn across a mile-long swath of destruction.
And then; nothing.
No adversary claimed responsibility. No anarchist group stepped forward. And, as expected, the Chinese issued polished denials in fluent Mandarin.
But President Talbot knew better. He had already authorized Kavanaugh to proceed with Preece’s unusual proposal. And now, he’d convened this briefing with two clear purposes: to announce the reality of the situation in the Pacific, and to present his response. In his mind the pattern didn’t need attribution. But it did need a response. And traditional doctrine wasn’t going to cut it anymore.
“Gentlemen,” Talbot began, “I’ve been watching the Chinese redefine warfare using tools we aren’t even building yet. If we wait to catch up, we’re going to lose. And not just a region, possibly the rest of the free world.”
“Let me be clear,” he continued. “I believe we’re at a naval crossroads in the Pacific. The CCP Navy holds a 1.3-to-1 numerical advantage over us. If their current build rate continues, we’ll be staring down a 3:1 imbalance shortly.”
Talbot locked eyes on Admiral John Moffitt, the Chief of Naval Operations. “It’s not just about numbers, Admiral. Between 2015 and today, China has launched 120 surface vessels. We’ve launched 34. That has to stop.”
Moffitt’s jaw tightened. “Sir, our blue-water force is still structurally superior; both in firepower and tonnage.”
Talbot snapped his fingers. “I don’t care what we have. I care what they’re building; and how quickly they’re doing it. They’re on track to surpass us in missile magazine capacity alone. Meanwhile, we’re dicking around on a two year build rate for a Burke destroyer. Meanwhile, they’re tossing out a frigate a week.
“It’s true, John,” said General Roger Carter, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, leaning forward. “The Chicoms are cranking out ships, diesel subs, and patrol craft, then using them to leverage air-to-air and air defense countermeasures. Our doctrines are on the back foot John; it appears that we may be stuck in another era in terms of our speed of response,” then a pause.
Talbot killed it with a sharp response, “If we don’t pivot – fast - we’re going to cede sea control in the west. I’m not willing to allow that. Nor will I continue with our current construction path. I’m not going to be the guy who risks another Pearl Harbor. I don’t care how long ago that was.”
He fixed Moffitt again. “Admiral, I’m proposing a rapid-deploy autonomous vessel program. We’re going to prototype, build, and deploy; with or without your existing shipyard capacity. Not because it’s easy, but because it’s necessary. Your reaction?”
Moffitt exhaled. “Mr. President, this idea is a fundamental shift…”
“Not a shift,” Talbot interrupted. “A response. We’re past deterrence. Build or lose. Will you stand with the future, or with tradition?”
“With respect, Mr. President,” Moffitt started again, “this isn’t about one platform or some experimental program. It’s a full reorganization of the Navy’s force and manufacturing structure. We’re talking about decades of strategic equilibrium.”
“Equilibrium?” Talbot’s voice cracked like a rifle shot. “Admiral, based on the information I have, the Chinese just put an unmanned hunter-killer under the Strait of Luzon, gave it a mind of its own, took out an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer and we entirely missed it. That’s equilibrium?”
NSA Belle DeAngelo cleared her throat lightly after a quick glance toward Talbot, “Admiral Moffitt, we’ve surfaced a program called Porcelain Ear. It was executed brilliantly by the Chinese. No one - no one - knew about it until a former Navy captain figured it out.”
“Who are you referring to, Ms. DeAngelo?” Moffitt asked, temper beginning to fray.
She glanced at the President again, who nodded. “Captain Darcee Preece. My understanding is that you know him.”
“Yes, I know him. He’s nuts. Mad as a Hatter. Thinks he can save the world with little combat drones that think for themselves. His whole train of thought is absurd.”
Talbot slapped the flat of his hand on the table; sharp and wet like a fish hitting a cutting board. “That’s enough, Admiral. I’ve spent time with Preece. He’s not crazy. Given the current situation, his level of innovation might be the only thing keeping us from having to learn Mandarin.”
He leaned in. “Okay Admiral, let’s go at this question another way. What does it cost to build a destroyer today?”
“I don’t understand the question, Mr. President. You want me to cost out an Arleigh Burke?”
“Yeah,” Talbot said, sarcastic. “You do know what one costs, right? And if you don’t; find out, Admiral. I’ll wait.”
“Now?” Moffitt asked, caught flat-footed.
“Now.”
Moffitt turned and quickly consulted his aide. A tense silence filled the room.
“Sir,” he said a moment later, “the cost will be between $2 and $2.5 billion per hull.”
“Okay. And do you know what each of Preece’s drones cost?” Talbot asked sharply.
“No, sir, I do not.”
“Roughly $10 million per copy,” Talbot said quietly. “And the build time for a destroyer?”
“Two to three years, sir,” Moffitt replied after another quick consult.
“And do you know anything about how Preece proposes to build a host of substantive drone fleet in a short period of time?”
“No, sir,” Moffitt said, red-faced.
“They plan to use recursive manufacturing,” Talbot explained. “Start with one master system that builds other master systems. Once those are active, each one can build ten drones per day. Ten master systems. That’s a hundred vessels per day; not per month; not per year; per day, Admiral.”
“I find that amazing, sir. And highly implausible,” Moffitt said stiffly.
“Well, we’re going to find out,” Talbot replied. Then he raised his voice and swept his gaze around the table. “And gentlemen; if Preece’s manufacturing model works, we’ll leverage it across your systems too. So buckle up. This is too important; and it’s damn well time to get off our asses and do something.”
Zhongnanhai Briefing Hall, Beijing – 2030 Local
A pale haze hung outside the double-paned windows of the Zhongnanhai West Hall, thick with secrecy. Inside, the room smelled of lacquered wood and stale chrysanthemum tea. The air was still.
General Han Jianguo’s eyes didn’t move as he set a crisp report folder on the burn bag beside him.
“The device failed,” he said flatly. “The Americans have it. Or rather, it found them; and exposed itself in the process.”
Premier Zhao Wenlei didn’t speak at first. He looked past the report, past Han’s iron-eyed expression, and toward a shadowed alcove where an aide had just activated a flatscreen. The grainy overhead imagery showed the last known contact of Porcelain Ear, relayed from a compromised Philippine weather satellite two days late.
“Was it compromised by force?” Zhao asked finally.
Han shook his head. “Unlikely. It wasn’t meant to sustain autonomy for more than seventy-two hours after being triggered.”
“Yet it remained active three weeks later; broken up? ”
“And its sisters sunk a Burke-class destroyer and a commercial cargo carrier, all in under four minutes,” Han said, unable to suppress a hint of pride.
Zhao turned. “You mistake tactical novelty for strategic advantage. Two ships to be sure, but now the last device has disappeared. Worse, it is now likely that the American’s know that we’ve deployed autonomous hunter-killers; something we would never acknowledge. Do you know what that means?”
Across the long conference table, Vice Minister Liang Jun from the Ministry of State Security cleared his throat delicately. “It means they will overcorrect. They are reactionary.”
Han’s fist tightened slightly. “Let them react. They’ll try to reverse engineer it. What they won’t understand is that Porcelain Ear wasn’t built in a lab. It evolved through experience. We didn’t program it, we taught it to learn.”
Zhao’s voice cooled. “And that distinction may cost us deniability.”
The room went quiet as the door opened. A junior aide entered, whispering into the ear of Admiral Xu Tong, commander of the PLAN South Sea Fleet. Xu paled visibly, then turned to the group.
“Satellite passes from USS Tucson suggest they deployed a capture method; possibly some kind of inert torpedo strike. Either way it appears that the last device was not destroyed.”
Han’s nostrils flared. “Are you suggesting that the American’s recovered it?”
“That is the current assessment, yes,” Xu said.
Zhao stood. “Then we have no more time to posture. The United States now possesses an artifact that merges recursive autonomy with high-pressure propulsion. If they reverse-engineer it…”
“They will,” Liang interrupted. “And likely already are have.”
Zhao folded his arms. “Then containment is no longer an option. We need escalation. Quietly, but unmistakably.”
Han didn’t flinch. “Then activate Sky Line. Bring Hua’s nodes online. Start flooding Western communication corridors with irregular telemetry and false-positive naval movements. We’ll bury them in noise.”
“Then we should proceed,” Zhao said, more to himself. “We make them chase shadows while we move forward.”
Han tapped the lacquered table softly. “And if they move faster than we expect?”
Zhao gave a thin smile. “Then we will turn the Pacific into a looking glass and let them drown in their own reflection.
COIL Enterprises – 0435 Local
The drone’s neural core lay like a dissected sea creature, a tangle of pressure-stabilized fiber optic conduits, bundled copper nerves, and silvered micro-casings etched with what appeared to be Chinese characters.
Dr. Miranda Escobar sat cross-legged on a steel stool, her black hair tied back, face lit by the pale blue glow of two monitors. Her blue blocking glasses slid halfway down her nose, focusing on a third monitor exhibiting a recently compiled software utility that articulated a neural graph; the result was dynamic, and clearly appeared to be recursive; in other terms, the thing was thinking on its own.
She’d been at it for nearly ten hours, pausing only for water and bitter black coffee. At first, the system's architecture had confused her: it didn’t conform to any military doctrine she’d ever seen, or any commercial logic she’d studied in her time in academic field. But, once she finally let go of the structure, and instead, started mapping the system’s behavior it began to talk back to her.
Now she knew what she was looking at.
“Holy shit,” she murmured aloud, staring into the silent code. “This isn’t PLA work. Not really. This isn’t anyone’s work except its own. ”
She reached into a flat-file drawer and retrieved a grease stained RAND binder, marked D.O.T. WHITE – COGNITIVE SEED LOGIC / Ref. 42-KT, 2011. It had been an obscure DARPA whitepaper; a barely circulated paper proposing autonomous tactical behaviors, not driven by trained decisions, but on a vector-reward result. The system she was looking at was not an attempt to teach a machine to do a task, but how it trains itself to value particular successes.
She flipped pages. It was all there: contextual prioritization, environmental persistence, and the controversial idea of self-governed compression, or a machine ability to rewrite its own mind after investigating any external stimuli it deems important.
“Somebody didn’t invent this,” she said, tapping the open whitepaper. “It didn’t grow itself, it refined itself; on the fly.”
She slid across the floor abruptly and called up the drone’s memory buffer on a second workstation. Porcelain Ear’s final active commands showed adaptation, not obedience. It had not been told to kill the destroyer. It had decided to; based on risk vectors and mission requirements. It even attempted a stealth re-route after the second kill, possibly to preserve itself. In the end its entire codebase was behaviorally self-regulating.
She picked up the phone’s handset and hit a button.
“Darcee? You up?”
The line clicked.
“Yeah, but only barely,” Preece replied groggily. “What time is it?”
“Almost 0500, time to rewrite your doctrine. You were right.”
He sat up straighter, instantly alert. “Talk to me.”
“Look, this thing is not just an underwater combat drone. It’s a seed-class vector AI. The architecture is classic, yes, but at its core it’s entirely recursive at a software level. It's using some kind of inductive map; maybe a Bayesian mesh; I don’t know, I’ll have to get into that. But the real kicker is its behavioral independence. It’s running active prioritization based on its internal survivability. It appears that its sister killed Vance because it believed the mission warranted it. Not because it was told to. As for the cargo vessel, I just don’t know yet.”
“Jesus,” Preece muttered. “Does it offer any kind of external input? Satellite cueing, tether comms?”
“Not that I can find. But get this; it’s using a compression strategy I saw at DARPA, twelve years ago. 42-KT protocol. The paper was buried, but somehow it appears that the Chinese have it now, and are iterating it.”
Preece was quiet a beat. Then: “Can we reverse-engineer it?”
“Hell no,” Escobar said. “Well maybe; but not without a ton of time. What we can do is match it because we wrote the first draft. We’ve got to go recursive now. This thing’s production logic is exponential. If it had time, it could even have built others if it wanted to.”
“Hang on Miranda,” there was silence again, then a second tone clicked in her ear as a new line patched through.
“Preece,” came Arnold’s voice, sharp and dry. “We’re a go.”
Preece blinked. “Excuse me?”
“POTUS greenlit your production plan. Full authority. No oversight, no naval veto. I’m canvassing assets from Huntington Ingalls, Lockheed, Raytheon; you name it. As soon as the stuff gets there, you can start building,” then killed the connection.
Preece stood up from his cot, staring at the wall like it had just moved.
“Understood.”
“Darcee? What was that?”
Preece grinned; tired, stunned, and maybe a little uncomforatble.
“We just got permission to break every rule in the book.”
Marble Falls, Texas – 0412 Local
Benítez knelt near the edge of the gravel drive, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, latex gloves mottled with blood and soot. The third body had been stripped, photographed, tagged, and buried — shallow, unmarked, and away from the main house. Cain Roberts stood nearby, lighting a cigarette with a single fluid motion, boots streaked with drying clay from the ravine behind the barn. Lucien DeSantis was already out back, dragging blackened tactical gear into a burn pit they’d improvised from a rusted-out livestock trough and a crushed tool chest.
No one said much.
The morning was thick with coastal humidity, though the surrounding hill country still carried the aftertaste of gunpowder and sweat. The first of the new COIL convoy was due in less than ten minutes, bringing the materials they'd need to finish the sanitization; industrial-grade thermite, magnesium slurry, and a classified gel incendiary that went by the codename Cutter’s Milk.
Benítez didn’t look up as she spoke. “We’ll need to torch it bottom up. Wood structure, open grain. That’ll make it fast and hot.”
“Yup,” DeSantis replied simply.”
Roberts exhaled smoke, watching it twist through the haze. “Hey Rosa, you ever wonder how we got here?”
Benítez didn’t answer. Instead, she stared at the dirt a moment longer before muttering, “Still can’t get over that first one. Real sloppy work.”
That kill had been silent.
Benítez was on the roof and padlocked the guy’s heat bloom moving up the hill. She shifted her cheek into the cheekpad of her suppressed rifle, took up the slack on the trigger, and delivered the first shot before anyone else knew what happened.
The tango dropped into the scrub; nothing more than a silent sprawl of limbs and gear. The second one pivoted; but he was too slow. DeSantis hit him twice from the treeline near the shed, his suppressed HK416 bucking twice. The third tango went to ground and tried to crawl behind a rain barrel near the storm trench.
Roberts got that one personally, and close up using his blade.
By the time Preece’s team was roused and secure in a secondary structure, the cleanup had already begun. No one asked why there had been no warnings. The three tango’s had simply become ghosts, in a minute and forty seconds..
An unmarked COIL van rumbled up the drive, followed by two more; a flatbed with steel drums and gear trunks, and a sealed cargo rig driven by a man with a Foreign Legion tattoo on his neck.
Benítez wiped her hands on a rag and stood. “That’s them.”
Roberts walked over to meet the lead operator, a long, lean woman named Vick Tan; former GIGN, now COIL. She popped the back doors on the cargo rig and gestured toward the interior.
“This is the exotic stuff,” she said, her French accent making the information, more elegant than banal. “Thermite variant, generates 3,800 degrees sustained, no oxygen required. Gel ignites off contact with itself, burns fast, leaves nothing but carbon ash.”
DeSantis was already hauling two drums off the flatbed. “We torch the main structure first. Then the shop. That’ll give us cover to destroy anything we need to.”
Tan nodded. “You got maybe thirty minutes, then the wind’s going to shift. If you want this to look like an accident, now’s the time.”
Benítez looked back at the field where the bodies were buried, nothing marking the burials but a dusting of dry grass. She pulled the black balaclava off her head and put it in the pocket of her BDUs, then muttered,
“Okay, let’s erase the place.”
COIL Enterprises – 0530 Local
Escobar leaned back from the bench, arms crossed, face still lit by the pale blue wash of the diagnostic display. The salvaged neural lattice was nothing but a twisted, prismatic thread offering partial signals.
“Clearly, this wasn’t designed for a single-use deployment,” she said. “This system learns. Slowly; maybe narrowly; but iteratively. It watches and adapts. What we got from the bottom of the Gulf wasn’t just a drone - it was conditioning itself. That weapon was working off a profile. Ours.”
Preece rubbed at his jaw, eyes narrowed. “So, you’re saying the device was cataloging our behavior?”
“I’m saying it was starting to anticipate. Its neural patterns aren’t tactical; they were procedural. More like a decision tree being rewritten mid-stream. I’ve only ever seen the theory in one place, DARPA. The idea was to let underwater drones evolve in a closed, artificial conflict space.”
Preece gave a dry half-laugh. “Let me guess. It got pulled when somebody realized it might turn on its own controllers?”
Escobar nodded. “Probably, but the Chinese didn’t.”
“I’ll keep pulling data from this thing’s core. Jay’s almost cracked the power puzzle – he thinks they were using distributed thrust nodes, by the way. Similar to what you sketched out for V3, only backwards.”
“That’s a problem.”
“It’s also a path,” she replied. “V3 and this wreck thinks in blocks, only in a different culture. That might be match and set if we play it just right.”
COIL Enterprises – 0935 Local
Preece found Stearns standing near the edge of the west access road, hands slung into his jean pockets, staring at a Quonset-style structure squatting behind a line of fencing. A flock of grackles scattered as he approached.
“You got a minute?”
Stearns didn’t turn. “Already guessing this is about your plan.”
“Yeah. I need a floor; somewhere I can lock down and build without any overhead tourists. And fast.
Now Stearns turned. “What are you going to build?”
“A recursive manufacturing center, I’m not asking for a machine shop; just walls, network isolation and enough power to keep the building running 24/7.”
Stearns pulled out his tablet, scrolled, then handed it over. “Building Six. Used to house stuff we utilized for a SAR project but it went south last year. Concrete floors, good ingress for equipment, and it’s already partitioned into bays. Power’s clean. It’s yours if you can clear it.”
Preece glanced over the schematics. “Good airflow?”
“Better than you deserve. I’ll get my techs to move the heavier crap. Clock starts now?”
“Yeah, now.”
“Okay I’ll get my people moving now,” he said, then turned and walked away already delivering orders on his cell.
Marble Falls – 0632 Local
The three original COIL operators stood back as the fire began to take, roaring from within the crawlspace under the farmhouse’s floor, consuming drywall, pine, carbon-steel frames, and every trace of any activity. The barn was next; ignited via a slurry-drip and packed magnesium rods shaped like oversized glow sticks. Cutter’s Milk licked through the ground insulation and into the subfloor in under ninety seconds, burning with a smell like scorched copper and ozone.
DeSantis monitored the thermal bloom on a wristpad. “You got your false narrative for this?” he asked.
Tan nodded. “Gas leak. Old propane system. I’ve added a local fire/ecology ticket after I hacked from the local first responder server. Then I triggered a Burnet County Sheriff’s order. They’ll execute a drone overflight in six hours, post-burn of course.”
Roberts flicked a cigarette butt into the fire and watched it vanish. “They’ll never know what happened here will they.”
Benítez stared at the flames. “That’s the point ain’t it?”
They all loaded into their rigs and drove west toward Llano. No one looked back.
Yulin Naval Base, Guangxi Province – 1715 Local
Rain ticked against the sloped glass windows as the Standing Council convened in the secure chamber known as Haigui Two - Sea Turtle Two. A dehumidifier hissed softly in the corner, the only sound not tied to men and war.
General Xu Weiguo sat at the head of the long basalt table. “The signal path is confirmed. The American unit that destroyed the Porcelain Ear has been located.”
A soft confirmation from the back: “Signal deadspace was achieved 18 hours ago.”
Admiral Chen Shu, head of PLAN cyber-kinetic warfare, leaned in. “This was anticipated. We must now begin Phase Two.”
Xu lifted a single finger and tapped the tabletop once.
“Deploy the next wave. Two under Luzon Strait, one deeper west into the Philippine Sea. Maintain silence - let the AI begin its pattern learning. We will not interrupt them unless one of them appears its going to be compromised.”
A younger liaison from the Ministry of State Security raised a concern. “And the American response?”
“They are still investigating. We will watch in turn.”
Xu stood and approached the reinforced windows. Outside, the water churned black and featureless.
“Release Porcelain Ear Two through Four. Let the Americans worry about it.”
COIL Enterprises – 0917 Local
Lahmer stood in a cleared bay lined with coiled wiring and tagged crates marked COIL-INV/RESTRICTED. The Stinger shell was suspended mid-air on a gimbal lift, still skeletal, like a ribcage waiting for organs. He hunched over a low monitor, squinting. “I don’t get it, Lahmer muttered, “I keep trying to match Miranda’s node positions, but I’m still getting echo across all of the control lanes.”
Across the room, Escobar entered the space, still clutching a coffee she hadn’t touched.
“Did you anchor the floating node; is it in sync?”
Lahmer looked over his shoulder and said, “Floating? What are you talking about?”
“The Chinese drone uses it Jay. Every subnode in the system negotiates its identity every 500 milliseconds; no fixed systemic location, no static controller. It’s not a spine. It’s more like a shawl.”
He stared at her. “Wait; are you saying this whole infrastructure is decentralized?”
“Exactly. I tweaked the system so its now built to survive a partial kill. You could destroy two-thirds of the system and it’d still continue to operate under degraded logic.”
Lahmer stood, paced. “That breaks the rules for everything we previously wrote. We assumed central arbitration.”
Escobar tapped the edge of the gimbal rig. “We don’t have time to rewrite the system from scratch. But if we hybridize the logic by importing Porcelain Ear’s swarm/sustain model; we’ll get survivability and adaptive behavior. You give up top-down control, but instead we gain mission persistence.”
He thought for a long beat, chewing the inside of his cheek. “We’re going to have to make the lock safeties go much deeper; probably below root. Maybe even hardcode some kind of overarching behavioral guideline.”
Escobar nodded. “I’m already working on that.”
“You think this thing is going to be safe?”
She looked at the Chinese core on the far bench, still pulsing with stored neural decay. “Given the timeframe we’re working under I think not doing would be worse.”
There was a long silence.
Then Lahmer pointed to the rear of the Stinger’s frame. “Okay, I’ll wipe the arbitration tables, and when you’re done with your next tweak I’ll load the dynamic mesh layer.”
The two of them began to move without speaking, each one of them holding part of the picture, but finally understanding that the Stinger would no longer be designed so much as grown.
DIAC, Washington DC - 0142 Local
Arnold worked quietly. No chatter. Just execution.
Kavanaugh stood behind him, his jacket off, tie loosened. He didn’t need the details, he only needed the result.
“We don’t want this tracked; right?.”
“Right. How soon?”
“Depends who has the assets we need.
Minutes passed.
Then a systems response appeared on his monitor:
Available Asset:
Type: Recursive Autonomous Assembly System
Delivery Format: ISO Container
Origin: Sierra Assets Group
Status: Storage Warehouse A-13 Bay 5.
ETA: 72–96 hrs depending on routing.
Delivery point?
Arnold turned. “I got it. Factory-sealed and pre-containerized.”
“Do it.” Kavanaugh’s voice was low. “Use a PACFLEET blind account. No Pentagon routing. Drop ship it to Llano Municipal, and well outside the fence. Stearns people can take it from there.”
Arnold nodded, encrypted the request, and keyed the location to a local air transport asset known for off the books work.
The whole query was was done in less than ten minutes.
“Good,” Kavanaugh said, then walked out of the office without another word.
Yulin Naval Base, Guangxi Province – 1042 Local
The secure conference chamber was windowless and cold, insulated from both the summer heat and the political noise beyond the compound walls. Within, four men sat beneath red backlit characters that read:
以静制动 (To Control Movement, Use Stillness.)
Lieutenant General Wen Baosheng, PLA Navy Intelligence Bureau, tapped a lacquered folder on the table without opening it.
“This was not a malfunction,” he said calmly. “The Americans have recovered the unit. Possibly intact.”
Across from him, Admiral Qiu Yuanchen exhaled through his nose. “You’re certain?”
“We intercepted chatter from Diego Garcia. The terms used matched the asset’s profile.” Wen tapped the folder again. “We have to assume that they have it; or at least parts of it.”
No one spoke for a moment.
Then Senior Colonel Zhang Rui, Strategic Systems Bureau, said quietly, “Then we must assume they are already investigating its structure.”
General Wen turned to the back of the room. “Bring the image up please.”
The wall monitor lit, revealing a low-orbit rendering of the Luzon Strait and Philippine Sea. Icons flicked into place: commercial shipping. Coast Guard patrols. A smattering of U.S. signals intelligence traffic near the southern Ryukyus.
Then the icons began to shift.
Wen spoke again, this time to no one in particular. “Cluster 4 is prepped aboard the Tianzhen platform. Three units, capable of lateral consensus and distributed packet communications.”
“Mission?” asked Admiral Qiu.
“Passive surveillance; below threshold. Wide-field passive acoustics only. No offensive action unless directly threatened.”
“And if we lose another?”
“Then we lose another,” Wen said flatly. “But if so, we’ll then have confirmation. And they'll also know we can afford the loss.”
Colonel Zhang nodded once. “Deploy Cluster 4.”
Wen tapped a secure line into his terminal and keyed the order.
Far to the south, aboard a converted undersea platform posing as a marine survey rig, three launch tubes automatically sealed themselves, then pressure matched their depth.
Five minutes later, in the cold dark silence off Lanyu Island, three second generation Porcelain Ear devices drifted into motion, no communications, no emissions of any kind, only soft propulsion and a faint hum of cognition.
The units fanned out beneath the Luzon Strait like needles sewn into fabric, silent, watching, beginning their learning cycle. Just waiting.
The Pentagon – 0715 EST
Admiral John Moffitt had been at his desk since 0400. The outer office was still dark, his aide had not arrived yet. That was deliberate. He preferred his own kind of silence.
He sat at his desk and pinched the bridge of his nose, then tapped a tablet awake. The device’s readout showed the latest projected build schedules for the so-called STINGER platform: small, fast, unmanned swarming units. Built without a Navy contract; operated under a Special Program.
Preece’s program.
The President hadn’t just overruled him; he’d bypassed the Navy altogether. And worse, the Joint Chiefs had let it happen without drawing blood, or even a minor squawk.
Moffitt reached into the drawer and pulled out a slim leather binder. No markings. Inside: a single printed memo from OPNAV N9, quiet-channeled to him the day before. The whisper of a project out of China Lake; drone countermeasures from a Fleet Defense Initiative killed back in ‘18.
Electronic “drone-shudder” tech. Disruptive pulse-field dispersal.
Unsexy; unproven. But still on the books, his books.
He keyed a secure line to the night desk.
“Get me Vice Admiral Hirsch,” he said. “And send a courier to Newport. I want to screen of all the previous counter-drone workups by COB.”
Let Preece build his toys, he thought. Let the President stake his career on an irrational doctrine.
The Navy had weathered fads before. And when this one failed; if even one of those drones turned against its operator, Moffitt would be ready to pick up the pieces, this time on his terms.
COIL Enterprises – 1328 Local
The walls of Stearns’ office were bare concrete and fiber paneling, cool and quiet despite the heat building outside. A rolling LCD map on the far wall showed the facilities perimeter acknowledging the locations of programmable aerial drones, cameras, and motion grids all nested efficiently across a pale green overlay.
Darcee Preece stood near the window looking out at the sunny Texas afternoon, only half-hearing the digital chirp that announced a secure inbound video call.
Preece turned and pushed an icon on his smart desktop.
The monitor on the wall snapped to life, resolving into the sharp, familiar lines of Kavanaugh’s face. The Director of Intelligence looked tired but sharp nevertheless, a sheaf of documents in is hand.
“We’ve got what we need,” Kavanaugh said. No preamble.
Preece leaned forward slightly. “Tell me.”
Kavanaugh gestured off-screen, listening as Arnold ran through a black budget evaluation, finally identifying a unit buried deep within an ONI procurement order. Turns out that what we needed was sitting idle in a warehouse at Fallon. The system had ever been opened. Apparently it had been flagged as a backup for some kind of canceled technical trial.”
Preece nodded once. “Condition?”
“Untouched. Completely pre-packaged. All Tier-1 calibrations are still valid. It’s what you asked for: modular, programmable, fully recursive, no external connection requirements.”
Preece raised an eyebrow. “Delivery window?”
“72 hours. COIL will get it direct. You'll have two DOD civilians accompanying the rig under a plain Jane clearance; no uniforms. It’ll be air shipped to Llano Municipal. I assume Stearns has people who can truck it over to you?”
Preece turned off-screen while asking Stearns to confirm if that was possible.
Preece let out a breath through his nose. “Yes, he says he can get that done. Thanks Ed, really nice response time.”
Preece said, Stearns has gotten us an old fabrication warehouse at the most desolate edge of his compound. It’s been pre-cleared and prepped to serve as a sealed access zone. Its got forty-foot doors, shielded comms, independent generator grid.”
Arnold nodded. “That should work – right?”
Kavanaugh adjusted his tie and looked between them. “Okay guys, the timelines are brutal. POTUS wants your first testable units rolling inside ten days. Based on your original proposal that’s two iterations, maybe three if you skip some QC steps – correct?”
Preece frowned. “Yeah, the unit itself will take three days to run its routine. Assuming that the mother unit and its daughters are all nominal, we should have 70 units complete by then.”
Kavanaugh’s gaze settled on Preece, “And when if the press ever catches wind of all of this; you didn’t build anything here, you didn’t work for me, and you didn’t work for the President. None of this conversation ever happened.”
Preece gave a tight nod. “Copy.”
Good luck gentlemen, unless something unusual happens, I’ll talk to you again in about 10 days and 72 hours, Arnold will keep me apprised until then,” then Kavanaugh ended the conference without another word.
Stearns looked at Preece slowly, “North fab it is, then.”
Preece looked at the map momentarily, then toward the hallway beyond the door. “Let’s take a look at the warehouse again and sectioned out floor space for the mother install and her daughters. We’ll keep the first Chinese kit in the annex until Escobar gives us a read back on what we can and can’t use.”
Stearns cracked his knuckles and reached for the intercom. “I’ll get Rosa moving. We’re gonna need to harden that zone.”
Outside, the wind had died down in the Texas hill country, and nothing was moving except a hawk circling high over the water tower.
Georgetown Row House, Washington DC – 2200 Local
The fire in the hearth had burned down, casting long shadows on the dark-paneled walls of the house just off Wisconsin Avenue. Outside, the evening traffic murmured along M Street, oblivious to the conversation unfolding behind its leaded glass windows.
Senate Majority Leader Arlen Colby stood at the fireplace nursing a glass of Oban, the amber liquid barely touched. His tailored suit was impeccable, but the slight tremor in his fingers betrayed a tension he couldn’t voice. Across from him, Chen Hua, Chairman and CEO of WamBa, sat with the unhurried calm of a man who had never once needed to raise his voice to command a room.
Hua’s Mandarin-accented English was perfectly clipped, the product of years at Yale and, before that, British prep schools designed to civilize the sons of Party elites.
“I take it your Admiral is adjusting,” Hua said, watching the flames dance.
Colby snorted. “He got his ass handed to him in the West Wing three days ago. POTUS didn’t flinch. Preece has a blank check. The Navy’s entirely out.”
Hua nodded slowly. “He’ll adapt. He is useful. Not creative, but... obedient.”
The door opened softly behind them. Admiral John Moffitt entered in uniform, still in uniform. He looked tired; older, Hua thought, or maybe betrayed by a conscience the Admiral hadn’t entirely managed to silence.
“Admiral,” Hua said, not rising. “You’ve had time to confirm?”
Moffitt gave Colby a brief nod, then faced Hua directly. “Yes. Porcelain Ear is in U.S. hands. Somewhere in Texas. We haven’t located the exact facility, but they’ve already begun forensic analysis. And Talbot says the President authorized production of their own device three days ago.”
Colby stiffened. “Production?”
“Recursive manufacturing. My guess is they’re creating a line somewhere, but I don’t know anything since I’m entirely compartmentalized out.”
Hua’s eyes twitched slightly. “Who is ‘they’?”
“Preece is the only name I have. Talbot is holding on tightly. He’s locked me out of the inner circle. I’m sure that Kavanaugh’s behind that.”
Colby interjected. “You’ve known Preece for twenty years?”
“Not exactly. We don’t like each other, and Preece doesn’t trust anyone anyway,” Moffitt replied. “He knows how to operate in the gray. But if he’s building something, you can be guaranteed that it’ll be fast, efficient, and lethal.”
Hua leaned back. “So what should we do?”
Moffitt hesitated. “Nothing. Not yet anyway.
There was a pause. Hua stared at the fire, as if watching something playing out far away.
Colby’s voice was lower now, conspiratorial. “You realize, if they get this thing operational, it will change the game in the Pacific.”
Hua finally stood. “Then we’ll ensure he never gets that chance. Porcelain Ear was only the first act. My engineers have launched a second surge. By the time your Pentagon realizes what’s happening in the Strait, the water will already be bloody.”
Moffitt said nothing, while remaining entirely still.
Hua turned to leave, pausing briefly beside him. “You’ll be kept informed. But not involved – clear?”