Above the Senkaku Islands
East China Sea
General Masao Takahashi peered out the window of the air defense transport plane, following the sun as it began to rise from the horizon. He squinted into the glare, searching the sea below for the US carrier group holding to the northeast. It was the fourth such armada to steam into Asian waters—a display of power and resolve meant to counterbalance the growing threat to what the Americans assumed was still the helpless country they had created so many decades ago.
China would take a half step back, Japan would continue to grovel over its past, and Western economic interests—the only interests that mattered to the United States—would be preserved.
Takahashi could still remember the day he’d seen the great man. The day that Douglas MacArthur’s motorcade had roared through the irrelevant little village his family had been left to rot in. The American commander had been exactly as the news reels depicted: a uniformed statue sitting in the back of a jeep, hidden by his hat, pipe, and sunglasses. He hadn’t even bothered to look at the poverty-stricken farmers lined up alongside the muddy road, showing complete indifference to the people whose pride and dignity he’d stolen.
Ironically, the people there that day saw him as a god. A supernatural entity who would restore Japan and teach it the arcane secrets of Western democracy. The savior of a backward race that could not be trusted to create its own future.
Takahashi’s mother hadn’t come to see the spectacle. A woman of wealth and grace before the war, she had been in the middle of a fourteen-hour day working the fields. It had been hot, backbreaking labor that she wasn’t suited for, but she never complained. She’d died just as his father was beginning to lay the foundations for the revival of the empire the Americans had stripped from him. And even with that last breath, she had spoken only of her concern for her sons.
Takahashi had been just a boy at the time with no concept of what was happening. No understanding that the treats she had given him and his brothers were from her own rations and that she hadn’t left herself enough to survive. Or maybe he had understood. Maybe he had just been unwilling to look beyond his own empty belly.
His headphones crackled to life with the voice of the pilot, pulling him back into the present. “General, we have a visual on our target.”
Takahashi went forward, stopping in the doorway to the cockpit. Through the windscreen he could see the vague shape of no fewer than five ships. The JDS Isi helicopter carrier and two Takanami-class destroyers were the only ones identifiable at this distance. The Izumo, though, was gone. She had dropped beneath the waves for the last time hours ago with forty-three men still aboard.
China’s ships had immediately retreated from the Senkakus at the orders of their confused government. Denials had been quickly and emphatically delivered, but the world was skeptical. The Chinese people, weaned on a diet of violent anti-Japanese rhetoric, had once again taken to the streets, this time with a fervor that the Communist Party was proving unable to control.
Despite their despotic tendencies, the truth was that the members of the politburo ruled their country at the pleasure of the billion people surrounding them. And those people’s pleasure was blood.
The pilot arced the plane to the west and Takahashi braced himself as they closed in on the massive rescue effort. After a few moments he could see individual divers working from rafts and the men standing at attention on the deck of the Isi, watching over the rows of flag-draped bodies.
He had spent most of his adult life studying Japan and the complex nature of its people. How could a small island in the Pacific have taken on the world? Why were Japanese children consistently slotted at the very top of academic achievement? How had his people acquired their unparalleled levels of courage and discipline?
At first he had focused on history and culture, but it hadn’t taken him long to realize that there were no satisfying answers there. Japan had been a relatively primitive and inward-looking feudal state, and in some ways that philosophy had persisted well into the nineteenth century. When his country finally decided to modernize, though, it had done so at a pace that the rest of the world could only marvel at. It was solely the failure of Japan’s nuclear weapons program that had kept the tiny island from taking control of Asia.
Even after its defeat at the hands of America, Japan had quickly risen to become the leader of technological innovation and the second-largest economy in the world—relegated to that subordinate position only by their relatively small population and lack of natural resources.
How had all this been possible?
The answer was finally revealed by the fledgling science of genetics. Isolated from their neighbors, the Japanese had not only changed in physical appearance, but had evolved the superior intelligence, discipline, and loyalty that elevated them above the other races. In a very real sense, they were born to rule.
“General,” the pilot said, twisting in his seat and pulling one of his earphones off. “You have a call from the prime minister.”
Takahashi nodded and pointed through the windscreen at the bodies on the Isi’s flight deck. “Get a picture of that.”
It would be a powerful image for his people to rally around. Of course, it wouldn’t be difficult to determine who had leaked the photo to the press, but what could the government do? Every day he got stronger and the Japanese people came to see their politicians for the useless theater troupe they were.
He took a seat in the back and plugged his headset into the plane’s communications system. “This is Takahashi.”
“What’s your assessment, General?”
Sanetomi tried to make his voice sound commanding but he couldn’t obscure his apprehension. There was nothing in his life that could have prepared him for what he now found himself faced with. He had been a simple schoolteacher before he’d gone to law school and discovered his gift for public speaking and making powerful friends. This was a situation that demanded leadership, and in the end Sanetomi was just a man who looked good on television.
“The Chinese sank the Izumo in waters the entire international community agrees are ours,” Takahashi said.
The prime minister tried to respond, but Takahashi talked over him. “According to the Americans it’s also likely that they attempted to sabotage the Fukushima nuclear plant. And according to our own intelligence people, they almost certainly tried to assassinate me.”
“Chinese involvement in the problems at Fukushima is little more than conjecture, General.”
And of course that’s all it ever would be.
“My apologies, Mr. Prime Minister. Of course you’re right.”
“We must step back,” Sanetomi said. “This can’t go any further.”
“And how would you have us do that, sir? Should I tell our captains to scuttle our ships? Would that satisfy the Chinese? Or perhaps we could just reward them for their unprovoked attacks by giving them—”
“I won’t be spoken to in that tone, General! Do you want to fight a war? Do you think it would be glorious? Even with the Americans’ help and the paltry toys you’ve developed, the destruction would be beyond anything we experienced during World War Two. Is that your goal? To die with your family’s sword in your hand while our country burns? Is that your idea of honor?”
Takahashi didn’t immediately respond, instead looking out the window at the rescue efforts that were quickly becoming futile. No survivors had been found for more than six hours.
“Sometimes destruction is needed before creation is possible.”
Sanetomi’s stunned silence wasn’t entirely unexpected. “You’ve been out there long enough, General. Return. Now.”
“As you wish,” Takahashi said, cutting off the link.
He leaned back in his chair and listened to the drone of the aircraft’s engines. They were on the inevitable path to the world’s first—and perhaps last—postmodern war. Technology would eventually progress to the point where battles between advanced nations would be unthinkable. At that point, the world order would likely be fixed for generations. It was his duty to make sure Japan led that world order.
Takahashi felt the plane level out and he assumed that they were on their way back to Japan at Prime Minister Sanetomi’s hysterical bidding.
It was impossible to know how long it would take for the Americans to understand the meaning of the Reactor Four samples. Perhaps they already did.
And if that was the case, they would do anything in their power to stop him from using Ito’s weapon. They might even go so far as to warn the Chinese or even join them in a preemptive attack on Japan. He needed just a little longer to prepare. To ensure that his plan would succeed. Soon there would be no one who could stop what was to come.