Aggressor: A page turning technothriller from FX Holden (The Aggressor Series Book 1) by FX Holden

Author:FX Holden [Holden, FX]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

China was a country of 1.3 billion people. It had reached the peak of its military might at the time its population peaked in 2022, and it launched its third aircraft carrier, Fujian, that same year. Its navy peaked at 400 warships in 2025. Its armed forces had topped out at 4.1 million in 1995 and trended downward since, reaching a low of 2.2 million in 2038. It had made up for this decline in personnel by upgrading the quantity of its aircraft, armor and, most of all, its missile systems. Unlike all other branches of the armed forces, which were stagnant or downsizing, China’s People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLA RF) stood up nearly 10 new brigades a year through the 2020s and 2030s, and by 2035 was over 50 brigades strong.

China’s solution to every military problem in its modern history was to throw massed forces at it, like a storm breaking against a dike, looking for breaks through which it could flood.

The Operation Skytrain planners knew this. And though it looked like it, their strategy was not to try to match China fighter for fighter. Their first tactic was to test Chinese resolve, and here China had not been found wanting. The Chinese response had, if anything, surprised Operation Skytrain planners with the depth of its commitment. China was launching more aircraft, from more bases, covering more sky than they had expected.

Their second tactic was to pull a bait and switch. The C-17 approaching Taiwan from Okinawa in the northeast, in the company of F-35C fighters and EA-18G Growler EW aircraft, was empty. Instead, the US Air Force had launched a second and larger C-5 Galaxy, loaded with 280,000 lbs. of food and medicine, from Fort Magsaysay in the Philippines, 400 miles south of Taiwan.

Its skeleton crew of four—a pilot, copilot and two flight engineers—were volunteers. It was flying alone, 500 feet above the sea, and was just about to enter the radar field of the PLA Navy Renhai class cruiser, Dalian.

Flying out to meet it, just crossing the coast of Taiwan at its most southerly point at 35,000 feet, were six F-16V fighters of the Taiwanese Air Force, which would hit the self-declared Chinese air defense zone at exactly the same moment as the American Galaxy in the south and the C-17 Globemaster in the northeast.

And amid this chaos, oblivious to all of it, also skimming across the wavetops directly east of Taiwan, was the Black Widow of Karen ‘Bunny’ O’Hare.

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