Chinese Ministry of National Defense "1st August Building" Beijing, China

Four days before

Lin Biao exhaled when he made the initial slice. As his mentor Wu Hua had explained so long ago, the key to precision was to move slow but steady, advancing the blade at a consistent pace. The cut complete, Biao reached down, picked up the withered carnation branch, and placed it into the faded canvas bag slung over his shoulder.

Landscaping was a step down for someone with a degree in economics from Chengdu University in Chengdu. But it was the only kind of work he had been able to get since his father, a local provincial Party official, fell out of favor and was purged three years ago with the associated reduction of the family's social credit score. He could get angry or he could focus on achieving the little perfections that made life satisfying.

As he trimmed the flowers at the base of the sign, he glanced at the etching in red: Ministry of National Defense of the People's Republic of China. Even with his connections to the ruling class, he was not sure about all things deep inside the building. His supervisor, Sun Chen, an ex-military, told him few things, but not more. It didn't matter. The landscaping crew was almost done here. After the break, Chen had told them that their next job is to trim the hedges behind the building's elder-care center.

Because of security, the landscapers were not allowed inside the building. When break time came, the others gathered in the shade, but Biao walked over to sit by the small decorative pond beside the entrance doors. He flipped open the tablet he kept in his pocket to see if he had any messages. The screen projected a 3-D packet from his cousin who lived in Jakarta - Indonesia's largest city. More pictures of his niece. Such lovely eyes.

His smile went unnoticed by Alexandra Liu as she cut across the grassy field by the pond in her rush from the parking lot. The Hong Kong-born imagery analyst had gotten stuck in the traffic on her way back from a networking lunch out at Tiananmen Outer Street. And now she was late for the staff meeting.

Neither of them noticed the other, but as she passed the landscaper, his tablet recognized the RFID chips embedded in Liu's security badge. A localized wireless network formed for exactly 0.03 seconds. In that instant, the malware hidden in the video packet from Jakarta made its jump.

As Biao finished the iced tea his girlfriend had made for him the previous night, Liu approached the security desk manned by a guard in a black bullet-resistant nylon jumpsuit. A compact QBZ-95B-2 assault rifle hung from the glossy gray ceramic vest that protected his chest. The only insignia on his uniform was the red star of the People's Army.

No Personal Devices Allowed, read the sign suspended above a row of silver turnstiles.

"Hey, Wang," said Liu. "How's your little boy?"

"Pretty good," the guard replied with a smile. "He slept through the night."

She placed her Huawei Band 10 in a metallic lockbox and pulled out the key. But Liu's badge stayed with her. As she walked toward the gate, the software in her badge automatically communicated her security clearance to the machine via a radio signal. And at the same moment of network linkage, the malware packet jumped again in less time than it would take to read one of Sun Tzu's maxim engraved on the entrance wall:

Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.

The idea of using covert radio signals to ride malware into a network unconnected to the wider Internet had actually been pioneered by the Chinese themselves, and like every kind of weaponry, once it was deployed it offered inspiration for everyone, friend or foe.

The turnstile gate lifted. Liu rushed down the hall for her destination, the Strategic Support Force Headquarters - too far behind schedule.

By the time she had passed the second security check which involved face recognition technology, the malware packet had jumped from the badge onto the face recognition system, then a security guard's viz glasses (1) when he passed.

The packet then jumped into the environmental controls that cooled a closet full of network servers supporting intelligence and influence operations on South East Asian countries. After that, it went to an unmanned-aircraft research and development team's systems.

Bit by bit, the malware worked its way into the various subnetworks that linked via China's equivalent to US DOD's SIPRNet classified network. The initial penetrations didn't raise any alarms among the automated computer network defenses, always on the lookout for anomalies. At each stop, all the packet did was a link with what appeared to the defenses as non-executables, harmless inert files, which they were until the malware rearranged them into something new.

Each of the systems had been air-gapped, isolated from the Internet to prevent hackers from infiltrating them. The problem with high walls, though, was that someone could use an unsuspecting gardener to tunnel underneath them.

The jubilant Chinese, well used to success against America and its allies, were simply less than alert on how much, and how fast, the opposing side can strike back.

.............

Twelve hours before
Third Person POV
University of Tokyo

Before the physical armaments were primed for the showdown, the war had actually started much earlier, in cyberspace.

A thin, bespectacled, 16 years old boy sat behind a workstation, faintly glowing metallic smart-rings on his wrists connected to the cubicle, his eyes hidden behind a dark tinted visor.

Even with the monotone nature of his work, he doesn't forget to smile or to answer every sustenance needs.

Rows of similar workstations lined the underground hall beneath the university building. Behind each sat either engineering or computer science student, all part of the 5th Training Regiment, a Reserve Officer's Training Corps (ROTC) unit of the University of Tokyo specialized in grooming information warfare commissioned officers for the Japanese Imperial Cyber and Information Defense Force, JICIDF, or CIDF in short. Two active-duty CIDF officers acted as supervisors.

In the democratic, free Asia, Japan was the second nation to recognize the changing times after the Republic of China in Taiwan with it's raising of an Information Communication Electronic Force Command (ICEF) (3) as it formed the CIDF on November 1st, 2001, one year after the back then-Taiwanese, as a reply to two separate attempts of hacking and espionage on Japanese industries. It's also part of a bigger picture; a through overhaul of Japanese defense posture with or without the United States, six years before the better known Estonian Cyber Defense League was set up in 2007 as the first dedicated cyber army within NATO alliance in Europe.

As the decade moved forward, computer-savvy Japanese at home and overseas were encouraged to contribute to this force as cyber auxiliary volunteers, emulating China's organization of its hacker militias and a NATO member state Estonia's Defense League Cyber Unit with 12 being a minimum age established by the CIDF, in order to root out or tipping off allies for any foreign-sourced cyberattacks, as well as helping less capable South East Asian countries inside IPSDC such as Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines to defend themselves electronically.

This arrangement also means that for all purposes, these auxiliaries were members of the voluntary National Guard, or Kokuyu Keibitai, started from age 16 and when a member hit 18 years old, he or she received basic military training including marksmanship and first aid thus was given military ranks. In fact, 60 percent of CIDF members were classified as National Guardsmen and women thanks to their part time nature and being employed in civilian sectors.

Most of the development above occurred before Jizaburo Katsuma was even born. Considered by many as a prodigy in computers in the same manner as Arima Kousei in piano music, he was one of the youngest who answered the call with the Greater Tokyo Area-based 80th Cyber Defense Regiment, also known as National Guard Unit 330 after winning a software-writing competition at the age of 13.

Being able to play with the latest technology is heaven for him, and the missions the officers gave him and his mostly-late teenager to young adult comrades in arms were usually fun. One day it might be hacking into a smartphone of a foreign influencer/journalist/social media personality whose views are considered suspicious and in many IPSDC countries as 'problematic', the next day could be wrestling with IT security at a Belarusian truck factory, Pakistani government department, a Burmese trading company linked to its notorious military, a Russian missile designer, or even against fellow IPSDC member states in realistic exercises to test their strength. Others could involve a DDoS attack against a Western or South Korean "progressive" peace movement or news media website, or just a plain old trolling operations on such group. However, the most exciting missions were all involving the aggressive red dragon - the Chinese.

The latter's rise was the main reason for the cyber shinobis - terminology used by the CDF for its volunteers - to be increasingly engaged in offensive operations, independent or in coordination with allies like South Korea, India, and the US. With the Wild West nature of cyberwarfare with virtually no lines separating civilian and military as well as the motivations; either pure criminal or state sponsored, Katsuma and his fellows had gained substantial experience in allied work; especially when it means a joint operation with American cyber privateers (2), as the US federal government since DeBakey administration had resurrected an old power written in their constitution, and thus technically were still authorized, called the Congressional Power to issue Letter of Marque and Reprisal allowing qualified civilians to strike back against cyber criminals on behalf of the US Government.

Such practice was then followed by Japan in the principles of "there is no such thing as too much firepower and too much defense" in this new domain of warfare as well as most of the major NATO nations and partners, in particular the three Baltic states as well as Ukraine and Georgia. Other main usage of the modern letter of marque was to track, freeze, and seize the illicit funds of transnational criminal and terrorist organizations of all stripes - in particular drug cartels, in which the CIDF had also participated in partnership with civilian law enforcement agencies.

He had made his mark by hacking phones belonging to civilian employees in the Chinese Ministry of National Defense as retaliation for China's similar attempt against America's Pentagon and Japan's Defense Ministry HQ.

Despite the restrictions on employees bringing devices into the building, a few with a higher level of favor by the powers that be did so every day. His technique involved co-opting a phone's camera and other sensors to remotely re-create the owner's physical and electronic environment. This mosaic of pictures, sounds, and electromagnetic signals helped the Japanese produce an almost perfect 3-D virtual rendition of the MND building's interior and its networks. The same technique, with some variety, has also been used against many other Chinese government facilities and companies with various degrees of success.

Patriotism and a staunch anti-communist stance were the main fuel of his volunteering, and physical exercises helped him and other auxiliaries to avoid muscle atrophy.

Little to know that the now-16 years old boy was about to hit the jackpot as the network defenses of the CMC began to smell that something was amiss and act accordingly to engage malware packages being carried by him and his compatriots.

In this cyber cat and mouse game, the Japanese, despite a few attacks being repulsed, had managed to keep themselves hidden, small enough, for the defense code and humans controlling it to lose sight of them.

Katsuma managed to gain access, and as he grinned, with the help of existing packages inside the whole system carried by friendly countries, he began inserting codes that would randomize the signals for China's Beidou satellite navigation network, in the same way as the Chinese's confirmed success in degrading the integrity of Global Positioning System at the same time.

In the meantime, one of his compatriots and lover, Yuuki Setagawa, had managed to be inside the network long enough to obtain orders and plans of the PLA especially those related to Taiwan, the South China Sea, and Japan. Other shinobis sounded off the alarm for every Japanese military and government institutions.

Slowing down the enemy was their main objective, and the cyber regiment has luck on their side.

"This will help our other folks to buy time," he told Setagawa inside a live chat.

......................................................................................

332 Kilometers Above the Earth's Surface

A small misstep was about to derail an operation that involved literally billions of moving pieces of software and hardware.

"Come on..." mumbled Colonel Mutta Nanba (4), an unmistakable edge in his voice. The poor uchuu-hikoshi or the Koreans called theirs uju-bihaengsa was trying to open one of the hatches when an accidental ignition of his maneuvering unit forced him to repeat the cycle.

Just as the astronaut, Major Saitou Tachikawa, managed to finally regain his footing, four more astronauts, one Japanese and three South Koreans, had passed him.

Japan and South Korea cited Chinese threat as a factor influencing decisions of both countries to accelerate their reconciliation from their pasts in order to be closer together particularly in national security-related matters, including in space exploration, codified by the Treaty of Seogwipo, a city in Jeju Island, in 2009. One of the results was the joint Mirai or Mirae space station program, meaning Future in Japanese and Korean respectively, launched immediately after Japan had become the second Asian nation to launch its first manned crew into space using indigenous launch vehicles, in 2010, after China, followed by South Korea four years later and India, two years after South Korea.

The project was further accelerated with unofficial American support and lobby upon China's launch on their first Tiangong-1 space station, a ten-meter-long, eight-thousand-kilogram single-module testbed in 2011, their equivalent of NASA's 1970s-era Skylab compounded by increased tension with Russia.

The first module for Mirai or Mirae was launched in 2019 one year after Chinese Tiangong-3's first module came online, whose construction was regarded by Western commentators as "good as ISS' first modules in the 1990s" Twenty-seven-meter-long, fifty-thousand-kilogram Mirai or Mirae was officially completed on April 8th, 2023, that was also the day when South Korea sent its first astronaut to the now-retired International Space Station in the early 21st century and was designated a national holiday afterwards.

Like the ISS and its US-Europe successor Liberty Pilgrim and Russian Pobeda (Victory), it had seven modules laid out in a T, including a core crew module that could support eight astronauts; six solar panels that extended out a hundred and twenty feet; and a docking port that could accommodate four ships. At the two upper ends of the T were parallel laboratory modules designed to conduct various experiments in microgravity. At least, that was what the rest of the world thought, initially. The port-side modules actually had a hidden purpose. And ever since the Chinese demonstrated such purpose in clearing space debris, the free nations saw no point in covering up their response.

Just in time, thought Saitou, as he found himself staring into the mirrored surface of a laser's lens and began checking it for any sign of deformation or damage to its mechanisms while studying the Earth's reflection in it, and his own form superimposed above the
peaceful blue beneath.

"Done," reported Saitou from his radio.

"I know you can do it, Major Tachikawa. Good work," said Nanba, the edge in his voice was gone.

"Thank you, Colonel."

The station crew had realized they were moving to war footing twelve hours ago when Nanba and his Korean deputy, Lt. Colonel Kim Kwang-il from the Republic of Korea Aerospace Force' Space Operations Command, had switched off the live viz feed of their activities and then a coded message:

"Dragon is about to fly."

But it still felt slightly unreal. Once the astronauts were all inside the station; "Count 3, 2, 1, mark."

Nanba and Kwang-il turned two keys secured on the weapon's console to arm the optical-fiber laser, basically, a system of souped-up industrial cutting and welding lasers coupled with a very efficient electrical power generation by its solar panels. Two modules away from the crew, the electrons were being pumped to generate the power required for the action to work.

This is it. We prevail, or we die so others may live and have their homes again, thought Nanba as the power indicator slowly turned red.

They would have ninety minutes to act, and then the power would be spent. That time will be shortened if several complications arise. The firing protocol for mankind's first wartime shots in space was well-rehearsed by both sides in the new divide. The targets marked in the firing solution had been identified, prioritized, and tracked for well over a year in increasingly rigorous drills the crew eventually realized were not just to support war games down on Earth. The long hours spent in the lab would finally pay off.

"Ready to commence firing sequence," said Kim. "Confirm?"

One by one, the other uchujins/ujubihaengsas checked in from their weapons stations. Then suddenly a report from one Korean crew.

"Sir, sensors confirmed that the Chinese had fired first... one of the American WGS-7 communication satellites has been shot down! We also confirmed a large scale randomization of GPS signals!"

Nanba put a deep exhale while touching the photo taped to the wall in front of him. His fingers lingered on the image of his beaming wife, Itou Serika, currently pregnant with a girl, and their grinning eight-year-old son. The smiling Hiroshi wore his father's sky blue aerospace force officer's hat followed by the JAXA baseball cap he wore prior to being transferred to the military when the Space Division was raised in 2019 as part of the expanded Air Defense Force which was subsequently renamed as Aerospace Defense Force. He also had a second photo put on; a memory of him and his younger brother Hibito on a mission to ISS, in 2017.

Now with the crisis at hand, the last transmission from JAXA had confirmed that Hibito were also mobilized as the entire agency had been temporarily transferred under operational control of the Ministry of Defense, while he would still maintaining his duty as an instructor for new astronauts.

That's what we're expecting.

Even with the oxygen-less outside were quickly filled with debris, Nanba kept listening to the final confirmation until the last crew reported "Ready!"

Nanba snuck another look at his family's picture and caught Kwang-il pausing, his trigger finger lingering above the second red firing button on his station. He appeared to be savoring the moment. Then both field grade officers gently pressed their respective red buttons.

A quiet hum pervaded the module. No crash of cannon or screams of death. Only the steady electric hum signified that the station was now at war.

"Execute evasive maneuver and prepare the defensive laser!" On Kwang-il's command while Nanba was focusing on target acquisition the retrorockets fired up, changing their position in orbit slightly as two large debris from a wrecked Canadian civilian satellite caught in the crossfire were flying too close for comfort.

The first target by Mirai/Mirae was Zhongxing/Chinasat-25A, a Chinese military wideband communications satellite. Shaped like a box with two solar wings similar to the American WGS/AEHF series, it had entered space in 2019 on top of a Long March 5 rocket - Chinese analogue of US Delta IV - launched from Xichang Space Center in Sichuan.

Costing over 150 hundred million renminbi, roughly 270 hundred million US dollars, the satellite offered the modernized and networked PLA up to 6.500 GHz of instantaneous switchable bandwidth, allowing it to move massive amounts of data. Through it ran the communications for everything from Strategic Support Force satellites to the growing fleet of PLA Navy submarines it was also a primary node for the SSF.

Its foreign users were Pakistan, Laos, North Korea, Cambodia, and Myanmar military junta. Iran was supposed to be the sixth approved user but popular uprising turned civil war dashed all plans while Syria, Algeria, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Armenia, despite their own military cooperation with China, preferred to use Russian SATCOM systems.

The space station's optical laser fired a burst of energy that, if it were visible light instead of infrared, would have been a hundred thousand times brighter than the sun. Three hundred and ten kilometers away, the first burst hit the satellite with a power roughly equivalent to a welding torch's. It melted a hole in Chinasat's external atmospheric shielding and then burned into its electronic guts.

The station was put into another evasive maneuver and had its jamming increased slightly.

Nanba watched as Kwang-il clicked open a red pen and made a line on the wall next to him, much like an ace pilot marks his kills.

"And there's the one," said Nanba.

"Sir. Major Tachikawa deserved a medal for what he had done for us today." Kwang-il told his superior as he clicked the pen shut with a flourish.

"Indeed he is" Nanba replied. "He deserves at least Order of the Rising Sun 5th Class or Order of Military Merit, Hwarang class in yours, Colonel Kwang-il. Resetting for target number two, hurry up. It is getting closer to the firing range! Second and third module, clear to engage debris!"

"Yes, sir." The attack algorithm lined up the station to the threat, a laser-armed Yaogan-XXIX reconnaissance-combat satellite, capable of observation but its primary role is to defend Tiangong-3 from hostile forces by its laser or jammers, and proceeded to neutralize it.

The Mirae/Mirai had the similar defense mechanism as well, but all of them were currently engaged hence the station itself had to do it's part.

The next target was the Yaogan-VII electro-optical guidance satellite, part of the Chinese's effort to increase the accuracy of its ship-killing DF-21 and DF-26 ballistic missiles. Meanwhile, a radio beam from NATO's Liberty Pilgrim informed the Japanese and South Koreans about how they had 'serviced' the other part of the system; Yaogan-XVI series of naval reconnaissance satellites used to detect US and allied ships in retaliation of the Chinese's crippling of US military's Mobile User Objective System, the latter's function is akin to a global cellular phone provider for the armed forces.

Of a sudden, both officer's consoles showed a four-number code; 0011.

"All crewmembers, cease fire. New rule of engagement, return fire only."

"Sejong module to Command module, what is going on there? Please advise, over." called the crew of the number 1 laboratory/combat module, named after a great Korean king known as the inventor of Hangul script for Korean language.

Nanba put on the answer. "The Chinese and the Americans had ceased engaging each other. We have to call it a day too, otherwise, more neutral satellites are going to be knocked out by the debris. We don't want the Russians to turn against us all if theirs got crippled as well or worse, nobody can launch any satellites. However, all of you, keep your eyes sharp." Nevertheless, when Kim finally put the pen back in his suit pocket there were twenty-five Chinese sats knocked out by the Free East Asians, including four Yaogan-XXIXs.

Then Nanba and Kwang-il went on to look at their console, with a new message. 1199.

"All crew, we are to assume support mode." Nanba looked at the screen as the coded number was followed by a message. US MSSL LAUN MDCGUID.

United States Missile Launch Mid-Course Guidance.

"Power up the receivers, people, we're about to help the Yanks to put some warheads at those Chicoms. The targets are being transmitted to this and Liberty Pilgrim, with what was left of our satellites as well."

A revolutionary reusable rocket booster technology, was heavily exploited by the newly-established US Space Force to leapfrog the massed number of Chinese ballistic missiles as the Gyrfalcon reusable military launch system.

The concept was, instead of satellites, the first stage carries a "bus" or second stage to Mach 5 and above, packed with various types of munitions such as hypersonic land-attack and or anti-ship cruise missiles, unitary warheads, unpowered hypersonic glide vehicles with it's own warheads, high speed drones, and many more. The second stage will be deployed within the atmosphere while the first stage would return to the launch site - or pre-planned divert site - landing tail first to be refueled and reloaded with another pre-packaged payload bus for another sortie, basically, a big hypersonic weapons platform.

Upon the payload's release, satellites and/or combat space stations will help guide the payloads to it's intended target.

The redundant, cooperative engagement of Mirai/Mirae and the Liberty Pilgrim meant double the effort the Chinese need to expend in jamming the link between the stations and the launched missiles.

Nanba can't thought about how the harnessed innovative killing power from America's private sector was basically an entertainment for him and his crew as the second stage released it's payload of multiple BGM-110 Blowgun hypersonic cruise missiles which was a development from Boeing Waverider experimental craft. Their targets were important infrastructure nodes of China, namely electrical substations, command and control center, air bases, ports, railway junctions, oil and gas facilities, and last but not least, man made islands in the South China Sea.

"Sure they won't surrender overnight, more launches will be needed, and we must expect more casualties on our side and even the fall of Taiwan, the Reds are resilient enough for a long fight, we have to agree with that... However, those things will make them realize that their homeland is not impenetrable."

"We'll see that, Colonel." replied Kwang-il, as sensors began to detect detonations above Mainland China and South China Sea, as well as Chinese retaliatory strike on US forward bases using their ballistic and cruise missiles.

...............................................................

Glossary

(1). Viz referred to a type of wearable computer - it's main example is Google Glass.

(2). Privateer is a private person or ship that engages in maritime warfare "privateering" but later also expanded in this story to include cyber warfare under a commission of war called Letter of Marque and Reprisal by a national government. This practice, in the maritime context, has been abolished by Paris Declaration in 1856.

(3). In the real world, the ROC Armed Forces' Information Communication Electronic Force Command (ICEF) was only established in June 2017.

(4). Mutta Nanba is from manga and anime Space Brothers/Uchuu Kyoudai.